Page 9 of Wolf Caged
Dose?
It hit me that it wasn’t the mating heat making me feel dizzy. It wasn’t the wine either.
Lucas had drugged my drink.
I looked at the lock, cold realisation sinking in. That was the reason I wasn’t strong enough to fight him or break the lock onthe cage door. That was the reason I hadn’t been able to shift to my wolf form again.
My fated mate had drugged me.
“Lucas,” I whispered, my voice failing me as I took stock of my situation and realised the only way out of this was to appeal to the one man who looked happy about it.
He looked so much like his father. Cold. Callous. Cruel. Where was the man who had smiled so easily at me, who had been warm and kind to me, charming me into falling for him? Had it all been an act, a mask to conceal the truth of him—that he was as vicious and cold as his father, as seduced by power and with a heart only big enough to love himself?
“Good.” He almost smiled, satisfaction that I wasn’t about to pass out written all over his smug face.
I wasn’t sure why he was so pleased about it, until a female stepped into the room, one I recognised from the party.
“I wanted you to be awake for this moment.” He did smile now, a grin that held no hint of the affection he had shown me over the years. It was as cold and brutal as his next words. “I wouldn’t want you missing me rejecting you.”
I gasped and reeled backwards, that word like a slap in the face.
Rejecting.
“Y-you’re re-re-rejecting me?” I stammered, my ears ringing as I felt as if I was losing my mind. My wolf side howled in agony as fiercely as my heart screamed in pain. “I don’t understand.”
I wasn’t sure I ever would.
I stared at him, struggling to make sense of the world and Lucas now, unable to recognise any shred of the male who had smiled and called me beautiful, who had lifted me up and was now tearing me down in the worst of ways.
“My stupid father made me wait—made me loyal to you—some female I’ve never known and never wanted.” Each wordthat left his lips was like a knife in my chest, cleaving away another piece of my heart, bringing another memory of him into my mind to shatter together with my reality. “I’ve waited almost half a century for this moment, wasting my maturity. I should have killed the bastard sooner.”
Shock knocked me on my backside. “You killed your own parents?”
Their deaths had been an accident, a fatal error while they had been running in the mountains.
The cold edge to his eyes and the satisfied twist of his lips chilled my blood.
It hadn’t been an accident.
It had been planned, by their own son.
Who was this male before me? Had I ever really known him?
I had been wrong. He wasn’t as cold and cruel as his father. He was worse. So much worse.
I couldn’t bear to look at him as the fragile pieces of my heart broke, as my instincts and my wolf side grieved, and everything I had known shattered before my eyes, revealing bleak reality that I had been blind to, and a future that was going to be far different from everything I had dreamed. The chairs spaced around the barn, all facing the cage, and the grim scent of bodily fluids, told me my future would now be a nightmare.
People gathered here. To watch what?
“Don’t worry. You’ll fetch a nice price. One last big sale. Maybe you’ll even bring in enough to get my pack out of this hellhole.” Lucas reached through the bars and patted my cheek, the action condescending, as if I was just a pet to him now.
An animal he intended to sell at auction.
Just as he had sold others.
Tears welled, even though I fought them back, not wanting him to see how easily he had broken me as dread pooled inside me, so bleak and black that I was sinking into it, drowning asmy mind filled with images straight out of a nightmare. My throat closed as numbness swept through me, as some part of me receded into the darkness, curling inwards to protect itself. This wasn’t happening. This was all just some terrible dream. Not reality.
Not reality.
