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Out of the corner of my eye, I see his hairline shimmering like he is trying to shift.

Shivers wrack me.So cold.My thoughts become a jumble as Crael drags me onto my back, the rough stone floor scraping painfully over my naked flesh. I fight, kicking out my legs, mind lost to a slow churn of my disbelief that this is happening.

“Very few shifters, wolf or otherwise, can escape bindings placed on their human form by shifting—my stag can,”Eiden told me on the very first day I arrived.“He is indomitable and sees everything as a threat…”

They think the bindings will contain him and that they have him trapped.

But he is not. His stag is powerful, more powerful even than Seven and Nox. He is feral. No binding can hold him back.

Why has he not already shifted?

Crael leans down over me, taking a long lick up the side of my throat.

“Eiden!”

A terrifying new understanding blooms.

“Eiden, please!”

Another lick that makes me shudder and thrash.

“I cannot!”

I sob, feeling his conflict and anguish in those words. He does not trust his stag. He thinks he will hurt me, maybe kill me, if he unleashes him, so he holds that part of him in check.

Were I not here, he could save himself.

His twin insinuates his knees between my thighs with terrifying ease. With my wrist pinned cruelly to the stone floor, my weak struggles are nothing to him.

My vulnerability is absolute.

“You can, Eiden!”

“Shut up, bitch,” Crael growls. He slaps the side of my face. The blow rattles my skull against the hard floor and leaves me clinging to consciousness by a thread.

I taste blood and defeat.

Survive.

I can survive anything, even this.

“You’ve made your point,” Eiden says, a dark edge to his voice I have never heard before. “Let her go!”

“Fuck you, brother,” one of those standing snarls. “You killed our father. Sent us all into exile. Do you think anything you have to say will deter us from defiling your mate? Not a fucking chance. When we’re done, your king will give up a pretty penny for his ruined queen. She’ll be no more than a broken shell by then. But he’ll pay it anyway. He could tear Wormwood apart brick by brick and never find us. We’ll be long gone by then, living in luxury on the other side of the Lumen Sea while your remains rot in this cell.”

I cry out as his brother squeezes my breast roughly.

“LET HER GO!” Eiden’s voice is like a clap of thunder, but it only stirs the brothers into hoots and cackles, well pleased that their games gain a reaction from my chained mate.

“Hurt her.” Marigold calls. “Use her. I want to see her bloody by the time you’re done.”

“Eiden, please,” I beg. “I trust you. I believe in you. I believe in your stag. He won’t hurt me; I know he won’t. Set him free. Let him have his revenge.”

Another blow sends me into darkness briefly, but I shake it away.

Eiden’s next roar is full of pain and anguish.

“Eiden,” I sob, the blood pooling in my mouth, making the words slurred. “I love you. I’d rather you killed me than let this monster hurt me. Only I know you won’t.”