Page 197 of Commanding Scythe and Sky

“Look at me while I’m talking to you,” the green-eyed man demanded. “You’re mine,” he snarled. “Mine to fuck, mine to use.”

Words once spoken with love and want, now corrupted by acid and cruelty.

“Mine to drain.”

“No,” I breathed. Darkness swallowed his eyes, and he lifted me by the throat until my feet dangled above the floor.

Perfect. The green-eyed man was perfect.

His smooth skin nearly glowed in the luminescence of a world woven entirely of white. But where a crook in his nose should be…

Only smooth cartilage remained.

“You’re… not… August,” I rasped, the name slamming through me like salvation.

The green-eyed man sneered, anger turning those emeralds onyx as he snarled, “Submit, you stubborn bitch.”

Agony struck like a live wire, my entire body convulsing. When the tremors finally ceased, my nerves felt charred in their wake, my eyes drifting closed.

“Hang on, Ally.” Ansel’s voice returned. Ansel. Ansel Callahan. He had a mate. A daughter. And he had died defending our family. “They’re coming for you. I promise August hasn’t given up. He will never give up on you.”

“August?” I breathed, the name wrapping around my chest like a blanket.

“Yes, Ally. He won’t quit on you. Don’t you dare let go.”

But agony swallowed the hallucination. A bolt of lightning tore through me so brutally it left me gasping in a pool of vomit and piss—mine, I thought. Mine, and yet…

I blinked, dragging in rattling mouthfuls of air as darkness greeted me.

Darkness, and… damp. Must. Stone.

I was in…

A small room. Gray stone walls. Gray floor. Shadows broken only by a silver blade of light from a window high in the wall.

Bars… on two of three sides.

Metal ones.

Desperate for air, I dragged in another breath, blinking at the fog in my vision and wishing I could clear the images, because…

Because this was…

I was…

“Ally?”

A man’s voice spoke my name, and I shifted onto hands and knees, trembling as I fought upright—first to kneel, then to find him in the dank cell.

I was not certain I knew him—the man—but he was waving something through the bars.

No.

The men in my life only brought pain. I shrank against the stone wall and buried my head between my knees, fingers winding into the silky strands of my hair. I pulled until it stung. Until it burned. Trying to feel something real. Something tangible.

“Christ, I thought I was a bastard.”

I did not know what that meant.