by Leia King
“No.”
“Oh, I think she does. Her silky, long black hair. Her piercing, blue eyes. Even her breasts. She’s the spitting image of Cora,” he insisted. “Sometimes I even call her Cora. She likes to roleplay.”
“That’s some seriously fucked up shit.”
Luca snarled and struck him across the face. Ryan’s head snapped to the side and he tasted blood. He glared at Luca. “Is that what this is all about? You wanting my wife?” He spat the blood filling his mouth all over the floor. “Get in line.”
Luca actually looked worried. “What? Who are you talking about?”
“The leader of the Fae.”
His worry melted away. “Yes. Davidas.”
Why wasn’t he worried any longer? It seemed like he knew about it and yet it didn’t bother him? With the way he felt about Cora, his obsession with her, it didn’t make sense. What was going on?
“You know him?”
“We’ve crossed paths.”
“How? What’s going on?”
Luca merely smiled, then turned to Vivian, whispering in her ear.
Ryan couldn’t make out what he was saying. It was the damned silver weakening his physical strength and his wolf senses alike.
Vivian suddenly eyed him, licking her lips. She stepped up close, making him tense.
She touched his bare chest. He flinched at the uncomfortable sensation of ice-cold fingers on his feverishly-hot skin. Her other hand joined in and she began full-on feeling him up.
“Get her off me!” he ordered Luca, trying to move away. But his restraints were so taut, it was impossible. Not when he was so weak.
In a flash, Luca stood at his side. He gripped his jaw and jerked his head towards Vivian, forcing him to look at her. “She’s very talented, Ryan. You’re in good hands.”
“Stop this, Luca.”
“You don’t want the pleasure she can bring you? You’d rather one woman for eternity? One as inexperienced as Cora?”
“Stop!”
Luca snickered.
“Sire?” Vivian queried, her hand on the waistband of Ryan’s jeans.
“Yes, my dear.”
Ryan jerked when her hand slipped inside his jeans and grasped his cock.
“No! Luca!” he cried. “Don’t do this. Call her off!”
Luca merely stood by.
Ryan growled as her hand tightened around him and she began fisting his cock, trying to coax him to arousal. He fought with everything he had to resist a physical reaction.
After several minutes, she still hadn’t managed to get the job done. Luca chuckled. “I’ve never seen such self-control, especially not from a wolf.” He grabbed Vivian by the hair and tugged her backwards. “Get out!” he yelled, pushing her through the bedroom door and kicking it shut.
“I will kill you,” Ryan choked, trying to catch his breath from the fucked-up shit Luca had just forced him to endure.
In a burst of vampire speed, Luca was beside him, grasping his throat. He leaned in and told him in an eerie whisper, “Now you finally know what it feels like to be helpless to someone else’s whims. Brutal, isn’t it?”
“What?”
Luca released him roughly and glared fiercely at him. “If you hadn’t come into the picture, Cora would be mine now. You took her from me. And, because you’re supposedly destined, there wasn’t a thing I could do to bring her back to me.” He shook his head. “Not willingly, anyway.”
Ryan growled.
Luca snarled back at him, then walked to a desk in the corner. Ryan zone in on several objects arranged neatly on the desktop. Great. More silver.
“The betrothal was Vazra’s doing, Luca. He didn’t want a wolf as his daughter’s mate, so he used it to complicate things. He never intended either of us to have her. He thought the betrothal would keep her from ever finding me. It messed with her pull towards me, remember? Then, he put her in a forced sleep for ages, thinking it’d keep you from her too. The betrothal was never really intended as a peace offering. It was all a ruse to manipulate things the way he wanted.”
Luca walked back to him, eyeing him curiously. “You’re telling the truth.” He’d obviously listened to his heartbeat, because it was a statement, not a question.
“Yeah,” Ryan confirmed, noticing the two objects he held in his hands. A scalpel and a silver whip. Fuck.
“You don’t get it, do you?”
Ryan frowned. “What?”
“It’s not just an agreement, some magical document.” He punched his chest. “I feel it. In here. It actually created a connection between us. Want. Need. Love. That’s why I cannot just let it go.”
Well, shit. “It doesn’t change the fact that it’s not real, Luca.”
“The only thing standing in the way is you.”
“How about what Cora wants?”
His eyes flashed. “She wants me, believe me. She’s merely confused. She’ll remain so, all the while you’re in the picture.”
Ryan’s temper flared at his words, his claim that Cora desired another man. “It’s clear this betrothal bond bullshit and getting too close to that freak, Michael, has warped your fucking mind. You need help.” Or, murdering.
“I’m about to get exactly what I need, brother.”
Ryan watched him spin the scalpel in his hand.
“The satisfaction of breaking you.”
Ryan scoffed. “You can’t break me.”
Luca tossed the scalpel at him. Ryan gritted his teeth as it plunged into his chest, just shy of his heart.
“Oops, that was a little too close.”
A shot to the heart with a silver weapon could kill a wolf instantly. “You hate me this much?”
Luca gripped the scalpel, driving it deeper into Ryan’s flesh, drawing a deep wound down the length of his chest.
Ryan bucked against his restraints, fighting to keep from crying out at the searing sensation.
“You deserve to suffer like I have. Your father’s betrayal of mine led to my banishment too. Then you take the woman promised to me? You will pay!”
He ripped out the scalpel and stood back to admire his bloodied handiwork. He tossed the scalpel across the room, then fondled the silver whip. He caught Ryan’s eye and laughed.
“Oh, this? You think this is what I’m going to use to break you? No, no. As Wolf King, you can withstand hours of torture. The fact that you have Cora’s blood running through your veins means you heal too fast for me to bring you to the brink of death, anyway. No. What will break you is this.”
Luca pulled the curtains aside to reveal the sky outside. Sundown was close. He could see the full moon breaking through already. To his disappointment, Luca wasn’t the least bit affected by the weak rays of sunlight reflecting off the windows. He knew it was because the windows of the mansion had been made with special glass that prevented the sunlight from harming the vampires within.
“The silver cuffs will hold back your shift when the full moon rises,” Luca told him. “Now that’s real torture for a wolf. Correct me, if I’m wrong, Ryan.”
Ryan responded with a ferocious growl.
Luca laughed. “Yeah, you’ll be doing a lot of that. Although the silver will prevent you from shifting, the wolf within will want to. It will scream at you with its overwhelming need to breach through the resistance. Michael used the same tactic on his wolves to turn them from common human realm wolves into his pets. He broke them this way. Apparently, the agony left them begging him to let them die and they lost their minds.”
A wave of terror rose within Ryan. He was aware of such torture and every wolf he’d heard about who’d gone through it had been left a broken shell of both man and wolf. The pain was truly unbearable. It ripped through you and destroyed you right to your core.
“I will kill you!” Ryan roared, pulling wildly at his restraints.
“You won’t shatter them. We kept you under that net of silver for hours. Your body is weak with it. Your wounds have only healed because of her blood in you.” He
licked his lips. “I can’t wait to taste it.”
“What?”
“That is your true purpose for being here. I will drain you dry of her blood, giving me the ability to walk right on in through the White Realm gates.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? You’ll be declaring war, you idiot.”
“Exactly.”
“Why not just drink? Why the torture?”
“Breaking you by using the full moon against you will ensure that you won’t be able to wage war against us when I breach the gates. The wolves won’t go into battle without their revered leader.” He gestured to the whip. “And this? This is personal.”
In a burst of vampire speed, he was behind him, flicking the whip at his back.
It bit into his flesh, the silver burning deep and ripping his flesh apart.
Ryan couldn’t hold back a cry of agony, as Luca did it over and over. Mercilessly.
Luca launched into another rage-filled rant, but Ryan barely heard him. He was caught in a haze of agony, unable to concentrate on anything, other than remembering to breathe, so he didn’t pass out. He wasn’t prepared to give that asshole the satisfaction.
As if Luca’s brutal torture wasn’t enough, a sensation more excruciating than anything he’d ever felt before, ripped through his entire being.
His gaze snapped to the window and he saw the full moon was high in the sky.
And the silver was preventing him from shifting.
Fuck!
He cursed and bellowed an agonized cry. His body shuddered. Sweat poured off him. He felt his claws breach the surface against his will, ripping through his flesh and tearing it apart.
Luca threw the whip on the ground and walked around to face him. The asshole was grinning. “Get ready to break.”
The door flew open and Michael burst into the room. He took in the gory scene. Blood oozing down Ryan’s chest, lacerations everywhere, the pool on the floor behind him from the lashing Luca had subjected him to.
“Luca!” he admonished. “I told you not to spill too much of his blood. It’s a waste.”
Luca shrugged his shoulders. “I lost control for a few moments.”
Michael breathed a heavy sigh. “You need to work on your self-control.”
“Let me drink from him now.”
“No. He will heal too quickly. As soon as you graze him with your fangs, the wound will close.”
“A bit of an exaggeration, don’t you think?”
“Look at his back.”
Luca did as Michael asked and walked behind him. Ryan heard him gasp.
“Unbelievable,” he muttered. “Completely healed.”
“A few more minutes of this full moon torture and he will be weak enough for you to drain him.”
“You’re… dead,” Ryan choked out.
He heard them laughing at him. And then another surge of excruciating pain ripped through him and he bellowed out into the room. Fuck, this is gonna kill me. He couldn’t take much more of it. He wouldn’t survive the night. But, he had to. Too many people were counting on him.
And that was when it hit him.
He looked up at his right hand. The ring!
He knew what he needed to do.
He closed his eyes and silently called to the wolf. The darkest part of the wolf that he’d trained himself to hold back.
He touched it within, choking on the awful taste of pure blackness that rose in his throat.
He heard Michael and Luca crying out in surprise.
He opened his eyes to see that he was actually choking up black blood. It dripped down his mouth, his chest. The dangerous, evil part within him was angry with him for forcing it down for so long and never allowing it to run free. Too bad, asshole.
He forced himself to focus amid its resistance and the agonizing pain tearing through every part of him.
He felt it rise, really rise, through him. It was all he could do not to vomit up that black blood again. At least he didn’t feel any additional pain from it. He was already experiencing the greatest level of pain imaginable. Nothing else could come close.
He glanced up at his right hand and saw the moonstones glowing brightly, just as the dark wolf within breached the surface. The bright light intensified to the point of exploding in fury.
And, just as quickly, it subsided and the glow of the moonstones faded to a faint twinkle.
The pain disappeared.
All of it.
Ryan breathed a huge sigh of relief. The ring had worked. It’d allowed him to control his own ability to shift.
His gaze snapped to Luca and Michael. He grinned triumphantly. They couldn’t even speak, they were so shocked by what he’d just done. They just stared at him, their eyes wide.
Moments passed, before Michael finally snapped out of it and bellowed, “Now! Quickly, Luca!”
In a flash of vampire speed, Luca launched himself at Ryan. His fangs tore through his neck and he drew his blood into his mouth, draining him, feeding on him. He was so wild and Ryan had been weakened for so long that he couldn’t push him back. Luca’s fangs ripped his flesh apart. He was sucking too quickly. A brutal wave of lightheadedness assaulted him. He was losing consciousness.
He was vaguely aware of a commotion coming from outside the room all of a sudden.
The floor shook beneath his feet.
He heard Michael screaming out the door at someone. “By the time you get through me, Luca will have already drained him, bitch.” And then he yelled at Luca, “Bite harder, you fool! You should’ve drained him by now. I told you, you only have seconds. Her blood has him healing exceedingly quickly.”
Luca bit deeper and sucked harder, drawing more of Ryan’s blood into his mouth.
Suddenly, Ryan heard Cora’s voice. And then, he felt his wolves. Cora had come? With his pack? No! She was putting herself in danger. They all were!
A sudden rush of dark energy pulled him from his panic.
A dark figure crashed through the window. Glass rained down all over the place.
Ryan felt Luca’s fangs being ripped from his neck. He was hauled across the room.
And then the intruder lunged at Luca, burying his fangs in his throat.
“Stop! No, father!” he heard Luca screaming, as the guy drained him dry in a matter of seconds, then tossed his limp body across the room.
He rose to his full height, then turned around, his demonic features returning to their human state, as he licked blood from the corner of his mouth.
His rescuer’s gaze fell on him.
And then Ryan was looking into the eyes of his father’s murderer.
Shock didn’t even cover it.
“Nathanial?”
He simply nodded. He sped over and slashed his talons at the restraints around Ryan’s ankles, cutting through the silver with ease. He did the same with the wrist cuffs.
Too weak to hold himself up, Ryan started to fall forward. Nathanial caught his dead weight with ease. He studied him and shook his head. “He’s drained you completely. You are too weak. We must go.”
“Go?” Ryan asked, exhaustedly. He could barely keep his eyes open. They closed, sleep pulling him under, just as he saw Nathanial’s magic envelope them in a teleportation spell.
Cora watched Michael struggle to his feet after being blasted down the corridor by the fury of her magic. Two vampires came at her, but David pushed them back.
She tried to ignore the sickening stench of blood and the sounds of Ryan’s wolves tearing through flesh just a few feet behind her as the pack battled Luca’s vampires.
In a sudden burst of vampire speed, Michael blew past her into the bedchamber where she’d seen Luca feeding from Ryan just moments prior. She ran in after him and was shocked to see him helping a weakened and barely-conscious Luca to his feet.
“My… father. He… drank… from me,” Luca choked out.
“What?” Michael snapped.
“Where is my husband?” Cora demanded.
Michael
spun around at the sound of her voice. He thrust a bolt of red lightning at her. Distracted by her search for Ryan, she failed to deflect it. It slammed into her chest. She only stumbled back a single step, before she managed to catch her balance.
Michael seemed more than a little shocked. “That should’ve knocked you to your knees.” He snarled. “Vazra has been teaching you.”
“Tell me where Ryan is, or I’ll blow this place apart.”
“My… father,” Luca said, eyeing her weakly.
“What? Nathanial was here?”
“This is his bite mark,” Michael told her, gesturing to the bloodied incision on the right side of Luca’s neck.
Cora was taken aback. The King of the Dark Realm had ventured into the human realm? He’d rescued Ryan? The very man who’d murdered Ryan’s father, had just saved his son? It didn’t make sense. “What does he want with him?”
“Does it look like we have any idea? He just drained his son!” Michael snapped.
“Then I have no use for either of you.”
She raised both her palms and called her magic to her. She could feel the power rising within. Since her training with her father, it no longer hurt. It was now a welcome feeling. A reassuring warmth. She gathered the full force of her power, intending to incinerate both of them where they stood.
A painful wave of dark energy hit her.
Calling her power put her in a vulnerable state to any other magical interference and she couldn’t cast out the dark energy as it hit her. She gasped and clutched at her head, as someone’s thoughts violated her mind, forcing their way in.
Stop, princess. You must not kill my son.
“Nathanial?” she gasped aloud.
Yes. I have Ryan. I will not harm him. He is safe with me.
“I don’t believe you.”
I have no reason to lie to you. He is weak. There is no time to explain. I must tend to him.
“Where is he?”
I will let you see soon enough.
Cora felt Nathanial’s energy leave her and she screamed, “No! Where is he, Nathanial? Where is my husband? Answer me!”
But there was no response. She removed her hands from her head and turned back to deal with Luca and Michael.
They were gone.
“Fuck!”
