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“Get the hell back here or I promise what comes next will be much worse.” His nostrils flared as one hand gripped his gut.

Run. Get out of there.

A chair soared across the room. Shattering a silver-leafed, floor-to-ceiling mirror.

“Now!” Kaine’s anger rattled the candles as much as her bones.

“Okay,” she breathed, “just please—please… don’t.” Knees buckling, Alora hesitantly maneuvered forward to the table where Kaine stood, avoiding the glass shards under her feet before carefully pulling the cloak from her shoulders, pooling it on the emerald rug. The floor that held countless brutal memories. The wooden floorboards she’d grown accustomed to kissing, laying on, covering her face to block incoming blows. His favorite place to see her now collected the evidence of where she had been that morning.

Kaine paid no mind to her cloak. His darkened eyes tracked her every step, then he locked his palm around her wrist. Wrenching her into his body, twisting her wrist as he pushed her to her knees and caused her to shriek in agony.

“Quiet,” he barked. A brutal slap to her cheek accompanied his demand. “Give me one damn good reason why you left this morning without my permission.” Twisting her wrist for emphasis.

“I—” Her arm twisted again. She screamed in pain. “Kaine, please. I’m sorry—I’m sorry! I couldn’t sleep. I just needed to go for a walk. I didn’t mean to upset you.Please.”

A deep rumble filled his chest, and he threw her arm back into her body before crouching down. That broad hand gripped under her chin, pulling her gaze to meet his glaring eyes.

“Make it up to me.” Those darkened eyes turned predatory as his legs pushed his lithe figure upright. Kaine unbuttoned his dark verdant pants, stroking his hardened mediocre cock inches from her face. A bead of precum waited on the swelled head. “Show me what a goodwifeyou can be.”

What Kaine lacked in length was overcompensated in wrath and pain. There were few moments when he wouldn’t harden as he beat her. This time was no different. And there was no doubt in her mind: if she didn’t do what he demanded at that moment, her treatment would end soaked in more than just his release.

The bruises would be much worse because the beatings had escalated. The bruises were harder to hide; her shattered belongings resigned to burned piles scattered in his dumping plants throughout the city. Everything she loved, destroyed. Each hand he laid on her was one step closer to her death.

Not a fucking chance, the voice inside her mind whispered.

She raised her head.

Death would not come for her today.

“Prove to me that you’re mine and mine only. Then I’ll forget this ever happened.” His hand brushed back a lock of her white hair behind her ear.

Alora hated that gesture but didn’t resist as he gripped her throat and pulled her closer.

“Good girl.”

She could have sworn she heard a low, vicious growl reverberating in the depths of her mind as she focused on thick smoke whirling above the table and around Kaine.

Then her mouth closed around him.

Alora layin the comfort of darkness after what seemed like unending torture for his pleasure. The tousled dining room held little satisfaction for Kaine and went even less toward proof of her loyalty. She hadn’t screamed in agony.

It was only after he had brutally dragged her from the floor and forced her into the sunless bedroom that he found what he was looking for. Her compliant screams that led to his release, high on the ecstasy of her pain.

He wouldn’t leave her merely existing there. Bruised and incredibly exhausted as he pulled his pants on and finished dressing in that which a lord was expected to flaunt.

Oh, how easily he slipped on the face of perfection and grace as a sigh of deep pleasure and satisfaction escaped his repulsive lips, knowing that he once more forced what he desired from her and left her alone and broken to pick up her shattered pieces. When Kaine fucked her mouth, he was not any sort of gentle. The gurgled chokes brought him some pleasure—her throat sore from the beating it took.

Alora rolled away from his direction.

Without a word after, Kaine escaped through the dimmed doorway. Finally leaving her to fade into the harrowing cage of her own tormented thoughts.

‘Tell me you’re mine.’

‘Say it again.’

‘Scream it.’

‘Whose are you?’