Page 104 of Her Tortured Beasts

“Darling,” Lord Hellfire says in a soothing voice. “He totes her around in a collar and chain. He made herbleed. Of course he could only hate her.”

She narrows her eyes at me until they are slits. “Only a man so obsessed with a woman could hate herthatmuch.” Francesca’s sun-reddened face glares at me for a moment longer before she beckons to her parents. “Let’s go.”

Francesca storms away with her mother in tow, but Lord Hellfire perches on the side of his beach chair, facing me. His voice is quiet as he says. “Sometimes feelings take time to grow, Xander. Just give her a chance. You’ll see there’s so much more to her than what’s on the surface.”

I turn to stare at him. He blanches under my gaze until his words register and I blink like a normal person. “Thank you, Lord Hellfire.”

He nods and trails after his family, leaving me alone with the waves surging and the harsh sun on the sand hurting my eyes. I pull down my sunglasses and tilt my head back, letting the heat of the day sink further into my skin.

Scythe had fought his attraction to her for the longest. She’d even been scared of him at the start, just like the rest. When did that change? When did she decide he would no longer hurt her, and more importantly, when didhedecide that?

Chapter 59

Aurelia

I’m surprised when they don’t take me back down to see Lorian the next day. The Collector seemed so obsessed with him that I assumed she wanted him fixed as quickly as possible.

Instead, I’m kept in my own cell for the next three days.

Perhaps she’s jealous of me talking to him. Perhaps she’s punishing me for my tirade. Perhaps she’s planning something.

Even so, they feed me well. The meat is good, the vegetables perfectly cooked, the juice cold. I eat the vitamins that come in the little paper cup.

On the third day, a collared anima comes into the room and takes my blood. Oddly, guards don’t follow her into my room; they remain outside. I regard the woman carefully. What type of anima would they feel safe leaving alone with me? She’s slender and pale-skinned with reddish-brown hair and a distinct port-wine birthmark on the side of her neck.

She stares at me in challenge, almost as if she’s daring me to make a comment about it. But I could care less about birthmarks. Instead I stare at the metal around her throat. Unlike mine, hers reads with only an ID number. I glare at it.

I scratch at my own collar as she brings out a vacutainer and blood-collecting vials.

“Nice,” I say drolly. “The scientists at Drakos House only ever used a needle and syringe. So old school.”

Her eyes flick up to me before she goes about her business, placing a tourniquet above the inside of my elbow.

I suppose they’re checking for ovulation. I’m not sure if my heat will even come on being so far from any mates for this long. It was coming to the right time, however. No doubt, The Collector is keeping track on a whiteboard somewhere.

“You should be more careful.”

I’m surprised by the harsh scratching of her voice and raise my brows. “And why’s that?”

“She is merciless.”

It’s cold water down my spine. She finishes up quickly, and before I can ask her what she means, the guards whisk her out. But as she leaves, her scent whirls before me and my brows shoot up in recognition.

The next day, I get to find out what she meant. They come to get me in the evening. My nails are bitten down to the quick by then, my lips peeling from where I’ve been tugging at the fine skin. There is a listlessness to my limbs and a heaviness over my chest.

The worst part of is, I know they won’t kill me. I know they’ll stop just short. That’s a new kind of mental torture.

Waiting for death I might have handled well. Butthis?This makes my anima thrash and snarl within me. She fights. Goddess, she fights it when they unlock my door and five guards enter with their guns first.

There is a single moment here, when I am surrounded by their hardened faces, the tang of metal in my nose, and I wonder what would happen if I shifted. If I fought them, tried to killthem. How many could I take down in the minutes before their gunfire would render me useless?

A shot to either leg would do it. They would have me on the floor.

Fight would only delay the inevitable.

So I raise my chin and walk out with them.

You will not break me,I remind myself.Not in this life or in any other. Athena Boneweaver was her name. Lorian is his name. My mates love me, and I love them.

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