Page 26 of Reforging Onyx

Onyx glanced up only briefly as Nathan’s pet took a morsel of food from his fingers with his lips, his own lips curling in disgust. The emotion only worsened when he realized that that pet was a witch, too.

Just like Onyx, he’d had everything taken from him… but he acted like all of this was normal.

This was what Dominic wanted to turn him into.

He didn’t want to be that. Not then, not ever.

That didn’t stop him from sitting silently beside Dominic’s chair right up until the point when the Bancroft witch urged him back to his feet. He led Onyx and his guests to a different room, filled with dark wood and leather furniture that reminded Onyx entirely too much of the playroom.

Unease raced down his back, but he fought not to show any further emotions as he surveyed the room. Separate from where the chairs and couches were, a corner of the room had been set up with a small open space with cushions like those that had been in the sitting and dining rooms. Was that where he was expected to sit?

With the other pets?

Dominic guided Onyx to one of the cushions before crossing the room and leaving him there with the other two.

Onyx hovered there, on the verge of flight instead of seating himself. Dominic would not be pleased if he decided to cause issues, but the idea of sitting and talking to other people — other pets — agitated him. It took Dominic giving him a quirk of a brow from the other side of the room to get him to sit down.

The other two looked normal enough, for all that the witch had some sort of weird piercings in his cheeks, and Onyx wondered just what else was beneath his clothes. If Nathan had detailed so many things to Dominic that he could do to Onyx, it stood to reason that he’d done that or worse to his own slaves.

A shudder ran through him.

He wasn’t going to ask. He did not want to know.

“You can relax,” the male slave told him. “I’m Tristan.”

To be an enslaved witch, Tristan had had to have either done something really stupid, or he’d had the ill luck to be born into the Rayne family, too. That was likely, given what Nathan had said during dinner. Onyx didn’t recognize him, but the family was large.

Onyx stared at the slave’s bare throat, nearly choking on his jealousy.

Why did Tristan get to go uncollared?

Well, all right, it was because Dominic knew Onyx would set the place on fire if he wasn’t, but it still didn’t feel fair. He loathed the witch for being so well-behaved that he didn’t need a collar.

Would that be Onyx, eventually? If he surrendered enough, if he was broken enough? He doubted it. As long as Onyx had any sort of fire left to him, he was a threat, and Dominic knew it.

But Dominic’s claims that he wanted to keep his fire meant little when he obviously expected Onyx to behave during a gathering like this, like he really was a trained and broken pet.

“I’m Marissa,” the female slave offered. She was wearing next to nothing, and Onyx eyed her for a moment. She was human, unlike Onyx and Tristan, and he could see that she had several piercings and the same kind of slave mark that Onyx and Tristan had.

“Onyx,” he muttered, fighting the urge to look in Dominic’s direction.

“Yeah, I know who you are,” Tristan said. “You’re the Rayne witch who was with the rebellion.”

Onyx’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t know anything about me,” he hissed.

Tristan frowned at him. “You’re right. I don’t. Calm down. No one’s threatening you.”

Onyx hated this. He didn’t want to make nice with obedient slaves, especially an obedient slave who could go around uncollared with full access to his magic. It made Onyx feel wild, feral, and he shifted restlessly on the cushion.

This had been a bad idea. What had Dominic been thinking in arranging this? Didn’t he know Onyx didn’t know how to talk to people like this? He had nothing in common with them at all!

Except… Except he did, because he let Dominic touch him and kiss him and give him things, all at the low, low cost of his soul. And his sanity, because that was the reality of the situation, wasn’t it? He wasn’t going to make his way through this intact, no matter what Dominic might think. He could bend, but how far could he bend before he broke — for real this time, forever, and not in a moment of temporary insanity?

He didn’t know what to say to either of them. He couldn’t relate to broken pets.

Not yet, a dark voice whispered in the back of his mind.

The only sort of friend he had was Shane, but that was different. Shane at least understood fighting and independence and aggression.