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It was my turn to cup each side of his face, forcing him—which was a laughable thought, seeing as he overpowered me a hundred times over, but he let me have control right now—to stare up at me so we could look into each other's eyes. “You deserve this baby. We deserve happiness no matter what?—”
He was shaking his head and closed his eyes for a second before opening them, those dark irises flashing red. “The things I’ve done in my long life, the heinous, brutal violence I’ve delivered to anyone who crossed me, and the total lack of fucking remorse—zero remorse, kitty—means I’m a monster in the worst possible way.” I had been shaking my head the entire time but stayed otherwise silent. “You, so perfect and sweet, with a soft heart that I love so much. Too much.” He rested his forehead back on my belly and murmured, “And this baby.” He took a shuddering breath. “Gods, our baby is going to be everything good and sweet, soft and innocent like what makes you… you, princess.” He lifted up my shirt and ran his lips along my skin. “You’re both mine. Mine forever.”
I didn’t want to cry, but here I was with fat tears rolling down my cheeks as I kept smoothing my fingers through his hair and feeling his warm breath moving along my belly, the feel of him saying we were his over and over again soft vibrations through my abdomen.
“I love you, princess, as much as a male like me can with a cold, black heart.” He stood and wrapped his arms around me, pulling me into the protectiveness of his body, enveloping me fully. “Whatever I am, and all that makes me jealous and possessive, territorially violent when it comes to you, is yours.” He kissed my face over and over again, not missing a spot, his fangs, long and sharp from the emotion he felt, moving along my skin. “You gave me everything I never deserved. I’m yours. Gods, princess. I’m yours.”
And as I listened to him devote himself to me and our baby growing in my belly, as I felt the truth in those words and how he held me so tenderly, mindful of how much stronger he was than me, I knew everything would be okay.
Everything would be perfect.
33
Odhran
It was the assault of scents that roused me, but still I couldn’t wade through my thoughts, couldn’t grasp my full consciousness. This was the same shit they pulled when transferring me out of the shitty cell they’d placed me in. They pumped me full of drugs, ones that made me groggy and feel half-dead.
After the first time they tried to take me out of the cell and I’d killed three guards, they made sure I was damn near comatose before coming near me.
My body ached, my limbs feeling as if they weighed too much, were far too heavy for me to move them. My head throbbed, and with each passing second as the reality of what had happened filtered back into my mind, I remembered where I was.
I remembered why I was here.
Tae find her.
After I’d told Adryan to take his mate out of the Assembly's underground facility in Vermont, the rest was a foggy, smoke-filled blur. I was pretty sure I passed out at some point; whatever fire had been burning in those tunnels filled the place with so much smoke I hadn’t been able to see my hand in front of me, let alone sift through smells to find my female.
But I’d felt her down there with me, and I refused to give up until I’d been lying on the floor, knowing that would be my coffin.
But then I'd woken up in a cold, dank cell and was suffering from a massive dose of Groundhog Day, as it seemed to be the same shit day in and day out. They ran tests on me, took samples, and kept injecting shit into my body that made sure I couldn’t fight them.
I didn’t know how long I’d been here, in the Assembly’s hold. The minutes turned to hours, the hours to days, and the fucking days turned into weeks. Time had no meaning here, no windows to let light in, no clocks to tell time. But I didn’t know if I was even in Vermont anymore—or hell, in the damn States.
But it didn’t matter. I only wanted her.
For the most part they’d let me be, let me be weak and helpless on the cold, hard floor in my cell. But now they were taking me somewhere, to do something, no doubt heinous, horrendous acts of degradation. This was what they were good at.
My wolf was trying to shake off the discombobulation, but my strength was returning little by little. Yet I wouldn’t fight the ones who held me. I wanted this. To come here, be captured… to see if my female was here.
Gods, the very thought of her trapped by these fuckers for all these years had me howling in pain, that agony taking root in the center of my chest, an ache I was all too familiar with.
I felt my body lurch forward. My arms were jerked upward, cold and hard metal wrapping around them. My legs were kicked apart, the same bounds going around my ankles. I felt cool air brush along my battered body, and as much as I tried to open my eyes, they felt sealed shut from whatever drugs they’d been pumping into me.
I could hear the growls coming from me, my wolf trying in vain to gain control. But I was far too weakened in my state to do much more than make hoarse noises. I heard the humans laughing, their voices muffled, garbled. Then I felt pain when someone slammed their fist into my side, next to the center of my chest, finally ending when they punched me in my jaw. My head kicked back, colliding with the stone.
“He’ll be fully awake soon. Let’s get everything situated. They’re all waiting.”
With each passing second, I was coming back online. I lifted my head and shook it to clear my mind and spit out a mouthful of blood, finally peeling my eyes open and taking note of the scene before me.
I was in some kind of room barren of most things except an examination-style table in the center and a metal rolling tray off to the side. The flooring was white-tiled with a massive drain in the center.
The room smelled of antiseptic and something else. Pain. Death.
There was an entire wall made of glass directly across from me, but it was too dark to see what was on the other side. But I knew I was being watched, not just because I noticed a security camera mounted to the corner at the top of the ceiling, but because I felt eyes on me that were coming from the other side of that glass partition.
And as I grew stronger with each passing moment, I tested my bonds. But there was little give, the metal digging into the skin of my wrists and ankles, tearing the flesh. I knew it had to all be mystically enforced in order to keep a Lycan bound. And that pissed me off even more, that these bastards extorted us in the most gruesome way yet had no qualms about using that same magic to hold us prisoner.
I bared my teeth and snarled as I pulled as hard as I could, trying to rip the bonds out of the walls.
