Page 10 of Blood Moon Heat

He’d locked me in!

I paced away and back, then tried it again, and again, but there was no getting out. Panic choked me, and I pounded on the door as hard as I could. “Let me out!” I screamed the words over and over until my throat was raw.

Stumbling back, I finally collapsed on the floor, the layers of my pink tulle dress puffing out all around me. I ran a shaky finger over a drop of dried blood on the skirt, Nero’s blood. My bonded had locked me in here.

The sound of the lock turning echoed through the door, and I lifted my head as it opened, swiping the tears from my cheeks as Nero walked in and shut the door behind him.

He stared down, regarding me impassively. “What are you doing on the floor, Mina?”

“Why did you lock me in here?” I wanted him to tell me something, anything, that made a liar of the voice roaring in my head.

His gaze slid over my face, and the intensity of it made me want to squirm. I quickly climbed to my feet, not wanting to be so weak, so vulnerable in front of him, and his gaze continued down my body in a way that lifted goose bumps all over me.

Finally, his violet eyes slid back to mine. “Feeding from me has altered your appearance. Your cheeks are pink and your lips are like rubies. Your blond hair shines and your lavender eyes are much brighter.”

Was he trying to pay me a compliment? “I…uh…thank you. But you haven’t answered my question.” I crossed my arms. “Why did you lock me in here, and…why am I in a replica of my bedroom?”

“Standing there in your pink dress, in this pink room, you look like a little doll,” he said, again not answering my question.

He called me that, he’d called me little doll several times now. It didn’t feel like a compliment. And I didn’t like it. Not at all. “And that’s what you want?”

His head tilted to the side in a way that was all predator. “Is it not what you want?”

“To be locked in this room? To be held prisoner in a twisted replica of my childhood bedroom?” I stared at him in shocked horror. “Of course not. Why would I want this?”

“What did you think would happen?” he asked, and I thought I might detect a touch of genuine curiosity in his voice.

“I don’t know…definitely not this.” I chewed my lip, trying to think, to come up with a way to get through to him. “My mother said… She said that we would…that you would…”

“What?”

Humiliation burned my face. “That we would mate after we fed from each other. I assumed that’s what we would do.” Then afterward I would finally have some freedom.

He closed the space between us and dispassionately swiped a tear from my cheek. “And you want that? Why?”

“I don’t, but the fates chose us for each other, right? There has to be a reason for that. I have to believe there’s a reason for that, for this…this…” I bit my lips together.

“What? What is this?”

My pulse was frantic, but I couldn’t hold the words back. “A nightmare.”

He studied me. “I’ve given you everything you could want. All your favorite things. Your books, your clothes, all your most treasured possessions, little doll. I believe after you have recovered from the shock, you’ll grow to enjoy your life here.”

“Here? In this room?”

“Yes.”

“This is where you belong, Lalka, my little doll. Only you.”

His words from the night before came back to me. He liked me here. He’d visited me in my room, every birthday from the age of sixteen because he’d gotten some kind of twisted gratification from it.

I didn’t know what that was, but it was enough that he’d wanted to recreate it. I was a…a thing, an object. An amusement.

He’d created a doll’s house for me, his little doll, trapped so he could watch me, enjoying my pain and fear while I pounded against the door, desperate for release. The freedom I longed for would never be mine. I’d left one prison, only to be taken to another.

“This is twisted, Nero. You have to know that?”

“Is it?” he said, but he didn’t want an answer. He didn’t care. He curled his fingers around the side of my throat, his thumb pressing against my wildly fluttering pulse. “You’ll get used to it, Lalka.”

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