Page 12 of Savagely Mated

Huge.

I wake up while it is still deeply dark, but suddenly I have the very unsettling feeling that I am not alone in my room.

The window is open.

That is how the men standing around my bed got in.

“Don’t scream.”

The order is growled in the dark.

I’m almost grateful for this. Fear erases guilt. Can’t be tormented by regret when you’re fighting for your life.

I’m not going to scream.

What I do is pull the sidearm from under my pillow and fire it at the nearest shadow. It’s an energy weapon, so it doesn’t make that much noise, but it certainly burns a hole in whatever it hits.

Unfortunately, it hits the wall, because he moved at the last moment, and another of them pushed my arm so that I’d miss.

“Fuck!” someone curses. “She’s going to fucking kill us before we get her out of here. Subdue her!”

“That’s enough, Darcy. You’re being hysterical. Calm down.”

I’m not being hysterical at all. I know far better than to be emotional in battle. If I do kill them, I’ll freak out about it later. But that’s not going to save them. I still react in the way I was trained to.

The gun is taken out of my hand, but I’ve still got the rest of my body to fight with. I kick, I punch, and I bite. I don’t get very farwith any of it, because three men are easily able to restrain one woman if they really want to.

“Shhhh. Stop it. We’re not going to hurt you.”

Another voice. A familiar one, but I don’t know it. Weird.

One of them steps through the beam of light cast through the window, and I see an unholy handsome face.

I remember everything in that moment. It all comes flooding back, forcing its way through the panicked part of my mind. The hot guys. The duel. The cardinal’s guard—and the way I killed him.

I don’t think they’re going to kill me. I think if they wanted me dead, I’d be dead. I have just enough sense about me to realize that, and for that realization to make me submit just a little.

I’m too mentally fucked up. That’s the problem. When I’ve got an adrenaline rush, I can protect myself. But I can’t sustain it while outnumbered.

I feel my resistance fade, and that gives them the chance to drag me out of bed, throw me over one of their broad shoulders, and carry me out the fucking window.

I have climbed out this window probably hundreds of times. I never thought I’d be dragged out of it. It’s scary. It seems higher than before. They’re working their way down a ladder, and there’s nothing more precarious than being slung over someone’s shoulder while they climb down a rickety construction of old steel.

I start asking questions. Fast, panicked questions.

“What are you doing? Why are you doing this? Is it the duel? You want to do the duel?”

There’s a little snort at my mention of that.

“This isn’t about the duel. We need to talk to you.”

“This is a funny way of talking. Let me go, or I’ll scream, and you’ll have several hundred cadets coming for you.”

“Just stop,” one of them growls at me in the dark.

“Don’t argue with her. Just handle her.”

I try to scream, but that cry is cut off by a rubber gag being pushed between my teeth. How are these guys inside the academy walls? Where the fuck are the guards? There should be alarms and shots fired. I used to think I could sneak out of this place because I’m very good at being sneaky. Now I’m considering that the guards just suck at guarding.

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