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“One,” the entire gallery of immortals counted aloud and the whip came down again.
Delilah tensed, her mind instinctively reaching for Christian’s, only to hit a wall.
“Two.”
Abraham moved quickly, making the ordeal difficult to witness and process at the same time. The males at her back counted off each stroke in monotone observance of their brother’s debt, marking each sentencing slash as payment for her crime.
“Nine.” Her shoulders tensed. The terrible snap of leather biting into Christian’s flesh took on a wet percussion as his body began to sweat.
“Ten.” The first trickle of blood appeared, his skin breaking open under the aggravated welts. Every lash after this would do more damage than the last.
For the next ten, she closed her eyes, flinching at every snap and whisk as the leather moved heedlessly through the air. When she opened her eyes again, the breath in her lungs clattered past her lips.
Christian’s back was a mosaic of welts and blisters. The angry red markings embossed his flesh, stretching his skin like an overworked canvas as the leather strap came down again and again.
“Thirty-two.”
Her vision blurred as the blood on Christian’s back diluted with sweat, running over his torn flesh in rivers of red. Each little tributary raced with gravity, soaking the fabric of his pants. The bulk of his shoulders trembled and twitched, but he never made a sound.
Every gutting swipe of that long leather tail caused her muscles to tense another degree, until her entire body coiled into one impenetrable knot. The whistle and crack as the whip cut through the air and her mate’s skin embedded a trauma deep in her soul that she feared would scar her for life.
“Fifty.” They were only halfway through the first one hundred and his back was already pummeled and torn in a way that made every motion excruciating.
She watched his spine soften and the sinew of his arms tremble whenever the whip stopped. The air pressing into each wound during every brief pause seemed as intolerable as the actual strikes ravaging his flesh. It was too much. Any mortal would have screamed for mercy by now, but Christian hardly cowered.
Abraham brought the whip down again, the flogging no longer lashing as precisely as it began. Blood saturated the leather tip and dripped from Christian’s clothing, speckling and streaking the floor. Delilah’s jaw trembled as the thrashing went on, the seventy-ninth lash forcing a grunt from Christian.
She jolted forward. “No—”
“Silence,” the one-armed immortal ordered from the marshal’s seat.
A tear spilled down her cheek as the elders looked at her with cold disregard. Christian’s tattered flesh pulsed with each labored breath, his blood seeping onto the floor.
“You will keep quiet, Sister Delilah,” the bishop ordered. “Or there will be consequences.”
Her jaw quivered as she silently nodded, tears now falling unchecked from her eyes.
Abraham stretched his arms, shaking out his tired muscles as he tightened the grip of his dominant hand around the whip.
Delilah had to cover her mouth to keep from crying out when the whip struck again.
“Eighty.”
When they finally reached one hundred, Christian’s body had curled forward to bear the pain more than to escape it. Every lash tightened his tense muscles until his body naturally closed up like a fist. Besides that, he hardly moved or made a sound.
“Brother Christian, would you like some water?” the bishop asked, and Delilah held her breath as only silence answered.
Finally, Christian’s head tipped in a partial nod, declining the offer. “Continue,” he rasped, his voice seeming to work around a fist at his throat.
“We will begin again at one. Three hundred lashings to go,” Abraham announced, giving no other warning as the whip whistled through the air and cut into Christian’s skin.
By two hundred the floor was drenched in blood. Christian kneeled in the dark puddle, his white-knuckled fists freckled in red spatters as he seethed under the pain.
Delilah’s chest physically ached as she struggled to look at what they’d done to him. His back was scored, an open wound of blood and pulp that likely burned with every breath, no matter if he inhaled, exhaled, or forbid himself to breathe.
Tears soaked her face and gown. Her fangs and claws extended a hundred lashings ago. Her body existed in a knot of tension as she forced herself to remain still.
“Do you have need for water, Brother Christian?”
She held her breath, waiting for him to answer. How would he survive this? They were only halfway through. She couldn’t bear any more. The ruthless torture had gone on long enough.
Staggering to her feet, the chair scraped as she swallowed back a sob. “He needs blood.”
“Sit down,” an elder on the bench snapped.
The one-armed immortal stepped down from the marshal’s seat, prepared to intervene. If anyone touched her, she was certain Christian would lose his shit.
“Please,” she begged, her tearful gaze falling on the bishop. “Let me give him blood.”
