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How many times they pulled me up, only to plunge me back into the brine, I couldn’t say—but enough to rob me of my ability to shift. When they finally hauled me up one last time, I hung there, my body retching up salty water, shivering in uncontrollable spasms.
Domren approached, his eyes searching my face as if gauging how much spirit I had left. “Take her to my cabin.”
With swift cuts, they severed the thin ropes. I collapsed onto the deck, a heap of utter exhaustion and lingering despair. Before I could catch a shuddering breath, two men grabbed my arms, dragging me across the deck.
Every fiber of my being screamed in fatigue, each bump and scrape over the wooden planks sending a fresh wave of pain into my muscles as righteous fear clawed at my throat.
Not his cabin!
Anywhere but there!
“No!” I shouted, kicked, and writhed, but I was quickly subdued.
With a rough shove, they pushed me into the monster’s den, making me stagger forward one unreliable step before my legs snapped. I collapsed into a shivering, heaving heap between a flickering oil lamp on a wooden desk and a small, but ornate bed.
They didn’t bother closing the door as they left, their thudding steps overpowered by those slow, deliberate strides of boots I knew held golden clasps. Every grind of his heel seemed to pulse with unspoken threats, leaving me with a terror I could not shake.
He would rape me.
The thought resonated my head clearly, neither conjured by panic nor suspicion. It wasn’t needed after what Sebian had told me about this man and what kind of barbarity he was capable of. It wasn’t fear… it was a fact.
That knowledge, that sense of preparedness, offered me a sliver of strength. But with the weakness of my body, I couldn’t escape. Maybe I would scream. Maybe I would tear. Maybe I would bleed.
But I wouldn’t let it break me.
My heart punched against my esophagus to the sound of the door falling shut, pupils darting across the room until they fixed on Domren. “Are you sure you don’t want to put me back into a net? What if I shift?”
“That is quite simple: you cannot shift when you are unconscious,” he said and stepped up beside me, his boot coming to a stop on strands of my drenched hair. “We’re on a ship to Ammarett, and we will be for quite some time. Entertainment is… scarce. They say womenfolk bring sailors bad luck, but I don’t agree with the notion. I daresay they are the only thing capable of making such a journey somewhat worthwhile.”
“I’m afraid I won’t—”
He grabbed my hair right then, yanking me up by it. “That Raven traitor of yours told me that you bonded to that usurper. I hope he can feel just how you’re going toentertainme.”
“Let me go!” I snarled, thrashed, and flung my fist around, fighting every inch he manhandled me toward the desk. “They’ll kill you! They’ll kill you, and they won’t make it swift!”
“Neither will I, if that’s what you were hoping.” He forced my arms behind my back, gripping my tender wrists in his hand. With the other hand, he once more gripped my hair. Then, he slammed my face down onto the desk, the impact burning like the hissing flame in the trembling lantern beside me, turning me dizzy, making everything spin. “Unless you feel so obliged to scream… I happen to like it that way.”
Blood flooded my mouth and mixed with the salt of tears, my entire body so exhausted, I couldn’t come up with the energy to spit it out. Neither could I find the strength to fight how clammy fingers pulled my soaked skirts up, the way I squirmed, quickly overwhelmed when he pressed his naked groin to my ass, his slimy cock sullying my thighs.
My legs quivered when he shoved himself inside me with a violence that crossed the border of discomfort and crashed straight into pain. I closed my eyes, whimpering with every aching thrust that pinched, tore, and stabbed.
If I’d thought I’d been acquainted to pain, then I’d been mistaken. There was no moderation in this, no restraint. Only constant anguish as he brutalized me, sometimes slamming my face against the desk to disorient me, other times squeezing my throat until I lost consciousness.
But I always woke with his weight still bearing down on my body. Or again? Perhaps I could have saved myself some agony if I’d screamed.
I didn’t.
It must have angered him, for the longer I kept at my little whimpers, the more he hurt me. “I heard he cried and screamed like a woman,” he said at one point, my mind dazed, my ears ringing. “Maybe you’re more man than he is.”
Eventually, he gave a final grunt, lifted off me, and turned away, leaving my body behind shattered, yes, but my soul intact. Until he opened the door and said, “Go have your turns.”
ChapterForty-Four
Sebian
Present Day, kingdom of Dranada
Rain pelted down on me where I stood, my boots sinking into the soil with a drawn-out smack, but not even this fucking downpour could clean the air from the stench that drifted here from Ammarett. From a distance, you might fool yourself into thinking it was just another fortress—big, imposing walls, sure, but still just walls. The harder I looked though, the more the city revealed a big fucking issue here.
