Page 1 of Exquisite Monster

CHAPTER ONE

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ENDRE

It was dark. Too dark. Not because there was no light, but because I couldn’t see it.

They’d done something.

It made my body sluggish and my mind muddled. My shoulders ached from the position they were in, hands held up and out by restraints heavy enough to keep me still.

Lena.

I couldn’t feel my mate. The bright spark where she lived in my soul was blank and gray. Not cracked and dark.

She was alive.

That was all that mattered.

Heavy footsteps approached. Multiple sets. The screech of unoiled metal hinges. “Good. You’re awake.”

My voice rasped in my chest, raw. “Why can’t I see?”

“You’ll be able to. Eventually. You dragons always react so much more strongly than humans. Thankfully.”

Why did he think that?

I’d barely heard his voice, but I still knew him.

Andaros.

The piece of shit who wanted to harm and cage my mate. Rage flooded my body and bounced back. With my arms locked as they were, I could do nothing. No…

I couldn’t fight back because I was still bound by Aeghi’s fucking command not to resist. I smothered the anger and grief. One more suffocating line of power wrapped around my soul to make me helpless. If I let the rage consume me?—

The thoughts stopped when I cut them off.

I didn’t feel Sirius and Zovai, like they were still unconscious.

Questions rose to the tip of my tongue. Where was Lena? What did he mean to do with us? If he was going to kill us, could he get it the fuck over with?

But I said nothing.

I’d been biting my tongue for three hundred years with the Elders. I could hold my tongue with this shameful excuse for a man and king.

“I was always told dragons were intelligent,” Andaros said. “But the Elders accepted the story about me wanting revenge on my father so easily.”

My mind went still.

It wasn’t true?

Of course it wasn’t true. We were alive. He wanted something more from us.

“One might think they wanted to get rid of you.”

I couldn’t stop myself. “What do you want?” The words ground out.

Hands grabbed my head and neck, forcing it back. I fought them out of instinct, but I was still weak, and the command rendered me unable to resist. Rough fingers wrenched my mouth open to the point of pain. Something was shoved inside and I couldn’t close it anymore, my jaw so wide it ached.