Page 1 of Despair

1

Lillian

Everything hurt.

Every muscle in my body, but especially the back of my neck and between my legs, ached, and I was so exhausted all I wanted to do was curl up and sleep until the pain went away.

But a furious growl rolled like thunder around me, and an urgenttwangfrom behind my ribs made instincts buried somewhere in the fog of my brain fight against the yearning for sleep.

“Jesus fuck, tranq the sonuvabitch again so we can check he didn’t injure her! She’s barely conscious,”someone rasped from far away. It sounded familiar and made my hackles raise. I groaned in protest and tried to shake my head clear of the fog, even if my eyelids refused to open.

I moaned in agony at the sharp pang in my neck, which was immediately followed by aroarand the unmistakable sounds of flesh hitting something hard. Groans of pain followed.

The panic in my chest finally made me force my eyes open, and I saw the blurry outline of a huge, naked alpha fighting against men with metal rods. They were shocking him with the ends of the rods, but he kept fighting and snarling, eyes locked on me.

I whimpered in panic as my chest constricted. He couldn’t get hurt—he couldn’t—

Three darts bored into the alpha’s neck. His next roar came out as a groan—and then he sank to the floor in a heap.

“No!” I croaked.

A small jab at the side of my neck was the only response to my distress—and then everything turned black.

The next timeconsciousness returned to my fuzzy head, it wasn’t the delicate ache in my body that first presented itself. No, it was a weird sensation in my chest, somewhere behind my ribs. As ifsomethingwas hooked there, tethering me.

Only then did I notice the heavy warmth cocooning me from all sides, pressing me down against a sparsely cushioned surface. It was all-pervasive and penetrated deep into my muscles, easing the tension in them.

I twitched, the tether in my chest giving an odd lurch, almost as if it werealivesomehow, my eyes popping open with a start. What the hell—?

A rumbling vibrated through me from the heavy mass resting against my back, followed by strong bands of warmth clamping tighter around my body until I couldn’t move my limbs.

Trapped.

I fought against the pressure keeping me down, disorientation and panic starting to set in as the tether in my chest lurched again.

Something flesh-colored maybe three inches from my face blocked my vision of my surroundings, but I could make out the surface I was getting pressed into—a bare mattress.

Another low rumble rippled by my ear—a scolding noise—and the weight on top of me shifted a little before teeth clamped shut around the back of my neck, making my body go lax without my consent.

That was when everything that’d happened last night came back to me.

351.

351 was wrapped around my back, pressing me into a mattress.

I wanted to shout at him to get off me, but his jaws around my neck made it come out as a pathetic whimper instead.

The alpha snarled, a questioning note to it this time, and somehow I knew he was checking if I’d calmed down.

I drew in a shuddering breath, but the panic in my brain was well and truly gone, washed away in the rush of endorphins his bite had released.

“Please. Let go,” I whispered. “It hurts.”

It did—pangs of tenderness radiated from where his teeth were still locked against my skin. He was aggravating the wound from last night, I dimly realized. Where he’d bitten me after he knotted me.

He’d broken the skin…

He’d… he’d put aclaimingmark on me! I was his…mate!

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