CHAPTER ONE
1069 Words
My father sold me for thirty million dollars and a shipping route. He shook hands with the devil, walked out the glass double doors, and did not look back.
I stood on the imported Italian rug. I stared at a deep scratch near the edge of the mahogany desk. It was a vicious gouge in an otherwise flawless surface. I wondered what had been dragged across it.
Vane Blackwood did not gloat. He did not even look at me. He stood by the floor to ceiling windows overlooking the city skyline, a heavy crystal glass in his hand. The ice clinked. That was the only sound in the billionaire penthouse.
Then he turned around.
He stepped into my airspace and the oxygen evaporated. He was too big for the bespoke charcoal suit. Broad shoulders, a brutal jaw, eyes the exact color of a winter ocean.
He breathed in.
It was not a sniff. It was an involuntary drag of air.
His pupils swallowed his irises. The glass in his hand shattered.
Crystal rained onto the rug. Amber bourbon splashed against his expensive leather shoes. He did not blink. He just stared at my throat.
I pressed my fingernails into my palms. I did not step back. Backing away from a predator only triggered the chase. That was the rule with wolves. You hold your ground until they kill you.
His Beta stepped forward. The man was massive, scarred, and suddenly pale. He reached a hand toward his Alpha.
Vane raised a bleeding palm. The Beta froze.
Vane locked his jaw. A thick, violent tremor rolled through his chest. He closed his eyes. When he opened them, the feral darkness was gone. He looked at me with absolute, surgical zero.
Get it out of here, Vane said. His voice was a flatline.
Not her. It.
Where do you want her, the Beta asked.
The vault. Vane pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket. He wiped the blood and bourbon from his palm. He still was not looking at me. He was looking at the blank wall two inches to my left. Lock the iron. Cut the ventilation. Let it freeze.
My stomach hit the floor. The vault. Humans did not survive the subterranean levels of the Blackwood Estate.
I did not beg. Begging required hope. I just dug my nails deeper into my palms until the skin broke. The sharp sting grounded me.
The guards grabbed my arms. They did not drag me. They marched me. We left the smell of espresso and expensive cologne behind. The elevator dropped twenty floors. The polished steel walls gave way to rough, damp stone.
The air down here tasted like wet earth and old rust.
A guard dragged his rubber sole against the slick floor. The squeak echoed off the low, arched ceiling. It was an annoying, ordinary sound in a place built for slaughter.
They stopped in front of a heavy iron door. It looked like it belonged on a decommissioned submarine. Solid metal. Rusted at the hinges. No window.
They shoved me inside.
I stumbled. I caught myself on the far wall. The concrete was freezing. It bit into my bare palms.
The heavy door slammed shut. The deadbolt engaged with a sound like a gunshot.
Pitch black.
I stood perfectly still. The silence was heavy. I could hear my own pulse thrumming against my collarbone.
I felt my way along the wall. Five paces wide. Seven paces long. A metal grate over a drain in the center of the floor. A thin wool blanket folded in the corner.
I sat on the blanket. I pulled my knees to my chest.
I was supposed to panic. I was supposed to scream and beat my fists against the iron until my knuckles bled. Instead, I cataloged the cold. The damp seeping through my jeans. The smell of copper from my torn palms.
Hours passed. The cold settled into my marrow. My teeth started to chatter. It was a sharp, clicking rhythm in the dark.
I closed my eyes. I waited for the hypothermia to take the edge off. I wanted the numbness. If I went numb, I would not have to think about the winter ocean eyes of the man who threw me down here.
Then the air pressure shifted.
It was three in the morning. I did not have a watch, but I could feel the dead weight of the hour.
The freezing temperature in the room suddenly spiked. The damp air turned thick. Heavy. It smelled like burning cedar and ozone.
A low, guttural sound vibrated through the stone floor. It was not a growl. It was the sound of something suffocating.
Footsteps sounded outside. Uneven. Heavy. Staggering.
Something hit the iron door. The metal buckled inward with a deafening crack.
I stopped shivering.
The deadbolt groaned. Metal shrieked against metal. The lock completely shattered, raining iron shards onto the wet concrete hallway.
The door swung open.
Harsh, yellow hallway light spilled into my cell. It blinded me for a second.
Vane was in the doorway.
He was on his knees.
His charcoal suit jacket was gone. His white dress shirt was torn open at the collar. He was shaking. Massive, violent tremors wracked his broad shoulders. Sweat slicked his dark hair to his forehead.
He crawled over the threshold. His fingers dug into the concrete. The stone actually cracked under his grip.
He lifted his head. His eyes were not cold anymore. They were entirely black.
He opened his mouth to speak. A thick line of blood spilled over his bottom lip instead. He was biting his own tongue. He was swallowing his own blood to keep from tearing me apart.
The heat radiating off his massive body hit me like a physical blow. It warmed the freezing cell in seconds.
He did not come here to kill me. He did not come here to gloat.
He came here because his biology was burning him alive. He came here because the feral heat in his blood was a parasite, and I was the only cure.
I did not press myself against the back wall. I did not hide my face.
I uncrossed my arms. I let the thin blanket drop to the floor. I watched the most lethal Alpha on the continent drag his massive body another inch across the filthy concrete.
I waited for the monster to beg.
- Writer
