Page 30 of Rejected Mate

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Darkness.

Movement.

Flashes of dim light.

Boot steps on the stone,tap, tap, tap,as someone carried me down a hallway.

“Stop,” I moaned. It was barely a whisper, a mere puff of breath, but my attacker heard.

“We’re almost there.”

I didn’t know if he spoke to himself or me. I didn’t know who held me or what he’d done to me, but I couldn’t move. The world was a fog, and I was trapped somewhere deep in the swirling mist. And, oh heavens, my head hurt. My nose and throat weren’t too happy with me either.

“Help,” I whispered, my voice raspy. “Help me.”

“No one can hear you,” the figure said. “We’re too deep in the castle for that.”

Deep in the castle? My clouded brain remembered the castle. That was where I was when I was abducted. We didn’t leave it? I’d have thought I would have been removed from my prison, but I was deeper inside. What the hell was happening?

The sound of rock grinding on rock. Air movement. He walked us inside a pitch-black room and set me down on something soft.

A bed.

“Stop,” I said a bit louder. My hands found fabric, and I pushed against it, trying to sit up. My head throbbed like someone was squeezing it. “You’ll regret this.”

“Probably.”

His voice…

A match struck, and a candle guttered to life.

“Ares.”

The vampire prince himself stared down at me. I never would have guessed he would be my abductor. He could do whatever he wanted. Why steal me from the hallway and drag me here?

I pressed a hand to my head to keep the dizziness at bay. “Why did you do this?”

Ares gave me a dark look, then turned and put the candle on top of a bureau close to the bed, which had a large, old wooden bedframe and soft sheets and fluffy pillows. The rest of the room was shrouded in darkness.

“How’s your head?” he asked, as if he cared.

“Hurts. Foggy.”

“Here. Drink this.” He grabbed a goblet from the bedside and offered it to me.

My trembling hands pushed it away.

He frowned. “Wren, I knew you wouldn’t come quietly, so I knocked you out. Forgive me. It was the only way. Otherwise, you would’ve made too much noise and alerted the whole damn castle.”

I touched my spinning head. “This was the only way?”

He held out the goblet again. “This will bring you back to yourself. I promise.”

“You drink some,” I said, sitting up on the bed.

He shrugged, then nodded and took a sip. “Not poison. See?”

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