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He leapt toward me, but I dodged him, barely sliding past to streak through the hall on the other side. Jesse’s hand whipped out to grab me, and he caught the hem of my towel, forcing me toward him or else risk revealing my naked form to him entirely. In that moment, I wasn’t sure which was worse: being caught by him or giving him even a glimpse of my nudeness.
Don’t be stupid! Save yourself!a logical voice shouted at me from the depth of my consciousness. But I was too late. His hands closed around my arms like a vice, his face contorted in fury as he drove his lips toward me.
“STOP IT!” I screamed, raising my hands to claw at his face, my fists transforming to paws, enacting my claws for effect.
“Don’t do it, Bianca,” Jesse hissed, his own fangs elongating.
The sight of the tiger teeth so close to my face gave me pause. His were so much thicker than mine, and I had no illusions about what he could do to me if I angered him enough. Whimpering, I retracted my claws, but I didn’t stop struggling against him.
“Be a good girl, and you’ll get good things,” he snarled, his promise insincere at best.
He was threatening me, and there was nothing I could do but allow it to happen.
I tried to put my weight down, to slow the process of being dragged back toward his chambers, but my actions only served to irritate him more.
“You brought this on yourself,” he growled. “If you had behaved, you would have enjoyed a proper wedding night with your sister, in my arms. Instead, you went and ruined yourself. With Atlas!”
“I told you before! I wasn’t a virgin when we came here, you idiot!” I shrieked, the fight returning to me as my fate drew closer. “Eugene lied to you!”
My words caused him to falter for a second, but just as quickly, he started to move again, pulling me alongside him.
“You’ll say anything, won’t you?”
“I’m telling you the truth! If you don’t care about how many men I’ve been with—”
He raised a hand to strike me, but before he could, one of his guards rushed toward us.
“Jesse, there’s trouble at the gate!” he cried, a definitive panic on his face.
Hope flared in my chest, but I willed it away. There was no reason for anyone to come for me here. Atlas would be too furious with me for leaving without saying goodbye, and there was no one else to come to my aid. Whatever issues waited outside had nothing to do with me.
“Handle it!” Jesse barked.
“We can’t!” the guard mewled, running off before Jesse could question him further.
His brow knitted into a vee of frustration, and he pulled me farther down the corridor.
“Wait here,” he ordered me, throwing me into a room I hadn’t yet seen. “And don’t do anything stupid.”
The door slammed as I rushed to rattle the handle. Of course, it was locked. I’d narrowly averted Jesse’s assault, but for how long?
I had to get out of there before he came back.
Chapter34
Atlas
“No, that’s impossible,” Vivian insisted. “She hasn’t come through here.”
“I saw her!” I roared back at the perplexed fox shifter. “Her father loaded her into a Jeep and drove this way!”
My breaths still ran ragged from the sprint I’d done all the way back to the compound, but I could see that Vivian was speaking the truth.
“I would have notified you if she came through here, Atlas,” Vivian said warily. “There haven’t been any vehicles coming or going.”
I shook my head in disbelief. Where else would Eugene have taken her?
Dread overcame me until Vivian made an observation I hadn’t considered.
