Page 107 of Corbin
“I warned you,” Varga said, still dragging in deep breaths. “Now, you will regret making me teach you respect. We put youin chains and take you over and over. You will not die soon. I may keep you that way for months.” He shrugged. “Until you bore me.”
Reaching deep, she heaved her chest up one last time. Nobody moved.
Varga slammed her head on the ground.
Everything blurred and spun around her. Her skull felt cracked open. Warm liquid wet her hair. She imagined her life force trickling away.
Sadly, she would rejuvenate and heal the damage.
Someone snatched the cloth off her head and grumbled. “Fuck. Must have hit her too hard. Damn rag is soaked with blood.”
She didn’t care for herself, but Nico would suffer without her to protect him.
One of her attackers howled, but ... not a victorious sound. That had been more like the pained cry of an animal caught in a trap. The heavy bodies piled on her started moving around, jumping up to face a new threat.
Boots stepped on her chest as they moved across her.
More blood gushed from her mouth.
She opened her eyes and saw only blurred images, so she closed them.
Had the last wolf shown up? Did he have Nico? Why were they fighting? Snarling, hitting, yelping. What was happening?
When the sounds died off, silence closed in.
Elianna blinked awake. She must have passed out. She could still feel the hard ground beneath her, but someone had propped her head on a wad of soft material. Her head throbbed, though less now than before.
Peeking through her thick lashes, she discovered it was still night, but even darker with the group of massive men hovering around to stare at her.
Squinting, she focused her eyes, but leave it to her nose to identity them first.
Bear shifters.
“You are Elianna, yes?” The largest man had a deep voice, better English than hers, and spoke with a refined edge, but he was clearly Russian.
“Yes.” She drew in air to speak and hissed at the pain in her chest before she squeezed out, “Who are you?”
“Alexandre of the Romanovs.”
“You are—”
“Yes,” he said, cutting her off.
Evidently, he did not want to be identified as her father in front of his men. She would not do so, for now, only because they had clearly dealt with the wolf shifters.
That didn’t make him her ally.
He stared at her with deep interest. She didn’t hide her curiosity either as she took in the man who had made her a pariah among all bear shifters.
His men watched the stare down but didn’t dare say a word.
Someone who must have thought her eyes needed help flicked on a dim light off to the side. She could finally see her father clearly and did not enjoy admitting that she now understood what had attracted her mother.
Alexandre possessed the high forehead, sharp cheeks, slightly curved nose and smooth mouth of an aristocrat. Dark hair fell around his shoulders. He appeared strong enough to lift one of the buildings surrounding them. His eyes were the most startling of all. At the moment, they were glowing like gold nuggets under bright sunshine.
Nico often commented that when she became angry, her gray-blue eyes lit up like diamonds on fire. Adult bear shifters were not meant to have eyes like hers.
All she’d inherited from this man, other than the grizzly blood that ruined the color of her coat, longer claws than a polar bear and a shorter snout in animal form, was that her eyes glowed when something infuriated her.
