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It didn’t help that her moon flow had started that morning. Under other circumstances, she’d have cursed the cramps and carried on, but today everything about this place scraped her nerves raw. Even before Nech’s rudeness, she’d been seething.

“Instead of tattooing me, you’d be better suited to riding my pole.” Nech dragged his gaze down the length of Ailsa before his attention fastened on her mouth. “You’re a strange one … so pale and proud … but I’d wipe that haughty look off your face.”

Ailsa stepped back, put aside her brush and pot of woad paste, and picked up a rag, wiping her fingers. “And I’d scratch your eyes out,” she replied softly.

Kayla glanced up, her gaze narrowing as she looked Ailsa’s way. She glimpsed the warning in her mentor’s hazel eyes yet didn’t heed it. Instead, she deliberately blanked her.

Nech’s smile faded. Lightning-fast, his hand whipped out, fastening around her wrist. He yanked her onto his lap, one thick arm clamping around her torso, the other tangling in her braid to wrench her head back.

Fuck. Enhanced tattoos already covered his arms and shoulders—the serpent tattoo wasn’t even finished, and still he moved in a blur.

“Let her go.” Kayla’s voice cut in. “Or I’ll call the guards.”

They sat in the windowless alcove that served as their tattooing workshop for three moons now. Gregor mac Hume sometimes worked alongside them here; his presence usually curbed this sort of thing.

“Call them, if you want.” Nech licked a slow line up her neck. “They won’t stop me.”

Ailsa went still.

Her vision narrowed. Her pulse slowed, dropping into that low, patient rhythm she’d come to recognize as hers—the bavaan’s. Waiting.

Not yet. She’d leashed herself every time someone insulted her, careful to keep her urges hidden from her captors. Kayla had warned her enough times what discovery would cost them both. Their best chance of getting free was lulling the king and his men into complacency, waiting for them to drop their guard.

But Nech had gone too far.

“Enough!” Kayla slammed down her blade, only for the man she’d been working on to haul her back by the waist, a hand clamping over her mouth. “Hold up,” he said. “Let the lad ease his ball ache.”

Nech loosened his grip on her braid, fingers trailing her jaw. “So pretty,” he rasped. “Look at that lush red mouth.”

There it is. Her opening.

There was nothing sweet about her—there never had been. She was half-wild, the daughter of a druid and a blood-sucking faerie. A predator ready to hunt.

Her chin jerked down. Her teeth clamped on his fingers.

The warrior grunted, yet she clung on, her jaw bunching as she bit down harder still.

Blood flooded into her mouth. Rich. Metallic.

Delicious.

He swore, trying to yank his hand away now. Ailsa didn’t let him.

She clung on like a rat, hunger twisting in her belly. The moment he loosened his hold on her and she got a hand free, she’d go for his throat, to where a vein pulsed. She’d tear it open and feast.

Finally.

“Guards!” The warrior bellowed, writhing under her.

His face bore no trace of lust now.

An instant later, the curtain to the alcove swept aside, and two leather-clad warriors, both female, barreled into the workshop.

Ailsa swallowed blood and her belly convulsed. Oh, that was good. Just what she needed.

Bone crunched.

“Fuck!” The warrior yelled. “Get this bitch off me!”