Total pages in book: 164
Estimated words: 152666 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 763(@200wpm)___ 611(@250wpm)___ 509(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 152666 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 763(@200wpm)___ 611(@250wpm)___ 509(@300wpm)
Control.
The word floated up immediately.
I couldn’t see in the dark so I couldn’t easily escape at night. I wasn’t as strong as a shifter—my axe didn’t penetrate far enough. I couldn’t heal, I couldn’t scent. Without more power, I was vulnerable, and that made it easier to keep me caged.
Hell, they weren’t even bothering to cage me. They just kept me within sight so that they could easily pick me up if I ran. Two legs wouldn’t get me far enough away, not with four legs chasing me.
Give me my animal, though, and watch me run.
“Let’s get you to bed, Little Wolf,” Weston whispered, his lips against the shell of my ear.
Little Wolf . . .
A storm of adrenaline and emotion rolled through me.
He’d called me that a few times. Once or twice it had seemed like a taunt. Sometimes, he’d said it almost intimately, like now.
My heart started to sprint.
It was true, it had to be, and he’d known all along. He must be able to feel it, because he caused that lava effect in me. He tugged on the thing inside of me but never far enough to pull it out fully—not until tonight, when his wolf had been in control. The wolf had backed off, but not before whatever was inside of me was teetering on the edge.
Little Wolf . . .
“Hadriel, not too late,” Weston said as he gathered me into his arms and stood.
“Right-O, Alpha,” he replied as Weston carried me back. “Don’t worry, tomorrow I’ll be rarin’ to go.”
“I can walk,” I murmured, my words slurred as I wriggled in his arms.
“Yes, I’m sure you could get to the tent. You’d probably cover twice the distance going side-to-side, though, and you need your sleep. We have another long day tomorrow.”
I didn’t say a word until we reached the tent, letting him put me down gently so that he could walk us in and close the flap behind us.
“Why are you so nice to me when you know you’ll have to kill me?” I said, afraid to ask what really mattered.
Pain flitted across his expression. “I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that. You will stand in judgment, yes, but your sentence is not yet set. The dragons are fair. They’ll hear your story and decide how you should pay for your crimes.”
“And you? Did you pay for your crimes?”
“More than you could possibly know.”
“The dungeons, right? The demon dungeons?”
“Yes. I ended up there when trying to save a pack member. They snatched me from the beach and punched in my animal so that I was helpless. Then they did things to me that—” His eyes turned haunted in the low light, a solitary lantern glowing in the corner, not mine. “You wonder why I hate what you do so much? It’s because, as I was rotting in that place, they juiced me up with their magic and loaned me out to their people. Their magic acted like a drug. They made me want to fuck, anything and everything. I begged for their filthy dicks. I pleasured their women and let them pleasure me, my mind controlled by their magic. By their version of a drug. And the next day? I swam in shame for how I’d acted, felt dirty for what I’d done. But then they’d come the next night, and the next, and I knew I’d have to do it all over again. When I wasn’t being forced to have sex, I was beaten and tortured to fuel their beasts. I thought I’d die in that place. I’d hoped I would, sooner rather than later. Your drugs are influencing people that way. They are altering minds and locking people in cages of addiction, doing things they would never normally think of doing to afford the next high. I’ve suffered for my sins, but innocent people who shouldn’t be are suffering because of you.”
My chest constricted with empathy I wished I didn’t feel, especially not now. When Hadriel told stories of the demon dungeons, he’d always spun it so that it didn’t seem real. It didn’t seem as dark and haunting, as traumatizing. Now, hearing it from Weston, seeing the pain in his eyes, the darkness of his past evident in every line in his body, I couldn’t help but be struck deep. He was hurting from that encounter still, I could see it. He probably always would. I understood where he was coming from. I understood that pain, so similar to mine.
But he refused to see the truth staring him in the face.
“I have proved to you that my product is not doing those things. You saw how it affected Hadriel. Me. It isn’t the same! There is no addiction, and if they are consuming the product in the first place, they are not innocent!”