Page 103 of The Florist and Her Alphas

“Please let me go,” I cry, begging him, but he laughs. He is actually laughing, the sound rolling out of his chest like this is the best night of his life.

I curl onto my side on the mattress.

My wrists are still bound behind me. I make myself small, knees to my chest, and I bite down hard on the inside of my own cheek until I taste copper, because the sound trying to claw its way out of my throat cannot come out.

I breathe through it. I make myself count.

Seven boards nail the window shut. Gray, warped, swollen with old damp. Between them, thin strips of afternoon light fall across the dusty floor, and I watch the motes drifting slowly inside each pale strip.

I make myself sit up. It hurts more than it should.

The door opens.

Silus steps inside wearing the same dark coat he wore in my shop this morning. His hair is brushed back, not a strand out of place, and he looks calm. He crosses to the small wooden chair against the wall and sits, crossing one leg over the other, and looks at me with an expression that mixes disdain and disgust in equal, careful measure.

“Please,” I say. My voice comes out cracked. “Let me go. Ezra will be looking for me.”

“You belong to me now,” he says, mild, unhurried. “You’re going to stop this business with the Frostwoods, and it all ends tonight.”

“Why am I here?” I whisper, though I already know, and hate that I have to ask anyway.

“I’m going to try again,” he says.

My stomach drops through the floor. “Try what again?”

I know. God help me, I know before he even answers.

He smiles. Small. Private. “Marking you.”

I know what a failed bite feels like on the body. The burn doesn’t fade for weeks, and the wound won’t close because the alpha behind the teeth isn’t my mate.

He rises. Crosses the small room. Kneels in front of me on the floor, the old boards groaning under his weight, and I try, and fail, not to flinch away from him.

“How did you find me?” I ask.

“Let’s just say you should never have gone to the little fair with your new useless alpha,” he says, leaning in towards me. He puts his face near my stomach and inhales. One long breath. His expression shifts. He inhales again, slower, deeper, and frowns, and pulls back to look up into my face.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“You’re pregnant,” he says. Quiet. Dangerous.

The room tilts sideways. My heart slams so hard I feel it in my throat, in my ears, in the tips of my fingers. I don’t breathe. I don’t blink.

Silus stands. Paces the narrow room, boots scuffing dust into the strips of light. Confusion crosses his face first, and then, horribly, a laugh breaks out of him.

“The Frostwoods got you pregnant,” he says slowly. “I’ll raise it as mine.”

“You’re delusional,” I say, low, though my whole body is shaking on the inside where he can’t see it. “They’re going to find me. I would rather die than raise my children in this house.”

His eyes go cold instantly. He kneels again, lifts my chin with one finger.

“You won’t take anything else from me,” he says. “My father made an agreement with your father, years ago, that you would be mine. Your father broke that promise. That is why your family died.” His thumb presses harder into my jaw. “My father kept you for himself instead. And he let me have you only after he’d already used you first. I spent three years watching him consume what was promised to me.” His voice drops, low and final. “Now I have you. Only me. I won’t even let my pack touch you.”

He stands and leaves. The door locks behind him with a heavy, final click.

I’ve been drifting in and out against the wall, my wrists raw where the plastic has worked itself deeper into my skin, when the noise starts.

I jerk awake.