Page 371 of Primal Bonds

Temptation tugged at her. She swallowed around the constriction in her throat. “No,” she rasped.

On the couch behind her, Langdon made a sharp, irritable movement. “Consider what you’re turning down. Imagine the power you’d wield as an honored Seer.”

She closed her eyes. Because she could picture it.

She fingered Adric’s amethyst through the shirt. If she stayed at the court, she’d lose him.

Her mouth twisted. So? He doesn’t want you. Even your own clan doesn’t know who you really are. Here, you could be yourself.

Her fingers tightened around the pendant.

No. That’s Langdon’s darkness talking.

Beneath her shirt, the pendant warmed, almost as if Adric had infused it with a spark of his own energy.

Adric had given the pendant to her, attached it to a leather thong so she could always wear it. In that instant, she saw something very clearly—with her heart, not her Sight. The warmth expanded to fill her chest.

Adric did want her. He just didn’t want to want her.

And suddenly, she wasn’t tempted at all.

She turned around. “And if I say no? Will you let me leave?”

The prince moved an elegant shoulder. “Perhaps.”

Anger balled in her stomach. “You can’t keep me here.”

“No? Try to leave without my permission and the portals will slam shut. I’m told it’s like running full speed into a stone wall.”

“You think you’re safe behind your wards?” She stalked toward him. “Keep me here against my will and my brothers will carve out your fucking liver and feed it to the fish.”

The prince’s mouth curved. “You’re a bloodthirsty little thing, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.” She smiled back, drew the stiletto—and leapt over the couch. She instinctively avoided touching his skin with her bare hands. Instead, she grabbed his long black hair, jerked his head back and touched the needle-like point to the hollow of his throat. His flesh sizzled, the acrid scent stinging her nostrils.

Langdon stilled—and then he raised a diamond-studded brow, that irritating half-smile on his lips again. “Now what?”

She pressed the blade a little deeper. “This isn’t a joke, asshole,” she said in her animal’s guttural voice.

His hand shot out, quick as a striking snake, to grip her jaw.

“Careful,” he gritted. “Right now the fact that you amuse me is all that’s keeping me from returning you to Blaer. She’s rather primitive in how she treats fada. She seems to consider you animals to be kept in cages. Perhaps you heard what happened to the Baltimore alpha’s sister?”

“Marjani Savonett?” She sucked in a horrified breath. Adric’s sister had been shut in a cage?

But she’d gone too far to back down now. “Go to Hades. I’m not here to fucking amuse you.” She pushed the stiletto deeper, piercing the skin.

Blood slid down Langdon’s throat, soaking the V of his pristine white shirt.

Cold fingers dug into her jaw. “That, my pretty little fada, was a mistake.”

A red flame flared to life deep in his pupils.

She swallowed and tried to wrench her gaze away. But she was caught. The dark power that had been pulling at her surged to life. Tentacles wrapped around her like an invisible octopus, latching on to her skin with eager, mindless mouths.

Terror swamped her. “Stop it!”

She knocked Langdon’s hand from her jaw and slapped at the writhing tentacles. But her hands slipped through them as if they weren’t there.

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