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The sheet rope that isn’t there.

I fall to my knees, searching beneath the shrub branches for the damn thing.

“Looking for something, Dove?”

Crystals of fear climb my spine, freezing me in place. I slowly turn to find Remus standing behind me, holding up the very thing I’m looking for.

“Clever, you. I didn’t even think of the sheets.”

When I push to my feet, I find Tom staring back with a remorseful expression that confesses his guilt, and behind him is Titus. My chest clamps around my lungs, while I try to imagine what Remus has in mind. Will they toss me over the edge of the cliff? Have Titus rape me in front of all the guards in fun?

Given the arrogant tip of his chin, Remus is loving every second of this, my nervous contemplation. “Step out in the open where we can talk to you.”

Much as I want to tell him to go to hell, I’m now well-versed in the consequences of defiance, so I step out from my hiding spot, into the open. The breeze from the open water stirs up my hair, and feels about ten degrees cooler than before.

Wearing a smug grin, Remus twists toward Tom. “I have to commend you for honesty. However reluctant you were to be so.”

I have no doubt that Remus probably threatened something as horrific as melting his fingers off, so I can’t blame the guard entirely.

With a quick nod toward Titus, Remus turns to face me again.

“No!” I lurch forward, and before I can stop him, Titus takes hold of the old man’s head, snapping his neck as effortlessly as if he were halving a dried twig.

As Remus steps toward me, I back up a step, tugging the knife from my side. The excitement that flares in his eyes sends dread sinking to my stomach. “And there’s the knife you told me about.”

My gaze flicks to Titus, whose stoic expression hasn’t once changed throughout this entire exchange. The bastard probably told Remus about the knife and my plan for escape, however he might’ve become privy to the information. If I thought I could nail the shot, I’d throw my blade square into one of his eyeballs.

“If you’d be so kind as to disarm our little dove, Titus?”

The moment the command is issued, Titus sets into motion, like a robot.

I back myself away from him, toward the edge of the cliff, keeping the blade outstretched. “Come near me, and so help me God, I will fucking jump!”

He pauses for a moment, his eyes seeming to gauge my proximity, maybe hoping to call my bluff. The Alpha has no idea how serious I am. How quickly I’d choose death on the rocks below over whatever punishment Remus has in mind.

Hand unsteady, I keep the blade on him, catching the dip of his gaze toward it and back to me. In one swift motion, no more than a breath, he snatches my arm and twists me around, my back to his chest, with the blade at my throat. The wounds on my back flare in protest, the pain quickly fizzling for the cold, numb fear creeping over me.

“Let me go!” Squirming against him is futile. His massive arms are locked around me like a steel cage.

“What are you doing, Titus? Let her go.” A twinge of panic clings to Remus’s voice as he frowns.

Dirt scrapes against my heels. The beast drags me closer to the edge of the cliff. The blade sits precariously at my throat, held with too-steady and firm a hand.

“Let me go,” I manage to grit out, and when I swallow, I can feel the steel’s sharp and unforgiving edge against my throat.

Guards approach Remus from behind, all of them holding guns aimed at Titus.

Air saws in and out of my lungs, each breath heavier than the last.

Remus raises the dart gun. If he shoots and Titus stumbles backwards, over the edge, I’m falling with him.

A creeping paralysis snakes beneath my skin, and in the next breath, my feet are swept from beneath me, my body hoisted into the Alpha’s arms. He issues a powerful blow square to Remus’s chest that knocks the blond back into the soldiers behind him like a stack of dominoes.

“Hold onto me,” is all he says, before he sets off running toward the edge of the cliff.

“No! No, wait!” I dig my nails into his flesh, and the moment he leaps from the precipice, my stomach rises to my throat. The surrounding darkness cloaks the treacherous fall, but I feel the wind whipping past my body and the Alpha’s arms tightening against my back, sending a sharp sting across the cuts there. Only a minor distraction to the horror digging its hooks into my gut. With my breasts pressed firmly against Titus’s chest, a scream lies trapped inside my ribs, the pressure in my throat on the verge of exploding.

Faster and faster we descend.