Captive Of The Warg, (Wargs of the Outland #2)

Stripped Bare

Reia was thrust back to her tenth year. She'd angered Rafen again. Failed him again. Her menses had come and she'd been too frightened—too ill—to compete in the tournament.

She'd seen the blood on her sheets and thought she was dying! But it was worse than death. It was her woman's curse. Rafen was livid. As though he needed reminding his only child was a useless bleeder.

Mother was trying to calm her, but there was little warmth in her too-large, fearful eyes. Reia's shrieks summoned her father. Then her uncle. Like a ghost, her mother slipped out.

And now they were alone in her chamber, the bloody sheets her campion of scarlet shame. The recessed bathing pool waited like an open grave.

"Please! Don't...I didn't know...I..." The water was black as oil. "I won't fail you again. Please!" Her heart lodged in her throat, trapping the air in her lungs. "I beg you—"

"Get in." Rafen's sibilant growl came soft and ominous.

Her blurred vision locked on the door where her mother had disappeared. Abandoned her. "Help me," she whispered.

"I said get in."

"No!" She tried to run away—raced for the door. But her uncle blocked the exit. The snap of the bolt rang like a death knell.

"No! Please!"

Her father's smile was brittle. He wanted her panic. Demanded her screams.

And Reia was powerless to give him anything else. She screamed until her throat bled, wasting precious air. Her nails tore through their flesh as they held her under. The blackness devoured her, her own clothes choking her even as the water smothered. Bubbles swam in her vision, disorienting. She kicked out, clawed, and bit. Fought the ravens tooth and nail as her lungs flooded. As the dark water inked with blood. Theirs. Hers. The shadows in her periphery yawned and she wished for death. But the gods were as deaf as they'd been a hundred times before.

A steely arm snagged her, yanking her from the water. She coughed and wheezed, sucking great gulps of air back into her starved lungs. She waited for Rafen to sneer. To threaten. Dare her to fuck up again (even though he seemed to relish it when she did).

But the darkness swarmed with a different rage. A silent hum. It stung not with ice but with heat. She blinked through the black terror, gasping, her mind groping. The water was...hot. So hot. Even the voice blistering her ears was torrid.

"Are you trying to kill yourself!?" Not Rafen. This voice was all passion and heat—not the cold, lethal tones of her childhood. She flung her arms around the voice, clinging to granite warmth.

Despite the heat of the water, her body trembled. Ice shot through her veins.

A deep growl rumbled against her chest. A kernel of awareness blinked to life like the evening star in the dark mass of her mind. Something alive and bright in the void of deafening horror.

His scent wrapped itself around her, buoying her, dimming the panic. The wargrex. It was his voice vibrating through her bones. His impossible heat humming along her flesh. A strange rippling sigh that welled from her fingerings and billowed out into the rest of her body like soft pulses of ember glow. Fire radiated from his chest.

The effect was dizzying. She had no will to rage at him or pummel his chest. It was all she could do to hold on and be still as her mind calmed. He was an island in the darkness to which she cleaved. She had the capacity to see little else except that she was safe and could breathe. That was all that mattered. She took deep inhales, the heat of the air thick and fragrant with his earthy musk.