Page 5 of Wolf Caged (Bound to the Shadow King #1)

Lucas’s hand locked around my wrist before I could bolt and he yanked me forwards.

The scent of damp earth hit me, but it didn’t cover the other things I could smell.

Blood. Urine. My eyes widened as I struggled against Lucas’s cruel grip, leaning away from him, a feeble attempt to gain some leverage and break free.

My limbs trembled, turning rubbery as I spotted claw marks on the iron bars of the cage.

My chest tightened painfully.

I kicked at Lucas’s leg, slamming my heel down on it, and he growled and tugged so hard on my arm that I cried out as fire lashed at my shoulder, shooting outwards from the joint.

The look on his face.

I didn’t recognise this dark male before me, who was looking at me as if I was filth as he seized hold of me, pinning my arms between us as I fought him. I wasn’t strong enough. Not in this form.

I tried to shift.

And nothing happened.

That panic morphed to full blown fear, to crippling terror as it hit me that I wasn’t strong enough to escape whatever Lucas had planned for me, that something was wrong with me, inhibiting my ability to shift. My mind reeled, thoughts spinning and colliding.

“Lucas?” I blinked at him, at the cage, my eyes leaping between them as he manhandled me towards it. I managed to twist my hands around and pressed them to his bare chest. “Lucas… stop . I don’t know what this is, but I don’t like it. Please. Let’s go back to the celebration.”

He didn’t react.

Was he even listening to me?

His glacial blue eyes remained fixed on the cage, his face etched with grim purpose as he dragged me towards it.

Something in me snapped.

I twisted my head and bit down on his arm, sinking short fangs into it and gagging as blood flooded my mouth.

“Bitch.” Lucas released me and staggered back, his eyes darting to his bleeding arm.

The sight of it startled me too. My wolf side howled in rage and agony at the sight of my fated mate injured, even when I had been the one to inflict the wound. What had I done?

Before I could shut down my instincts and run, Lucas backhanded me, striking me hard across my temple, and my vision swam with stars. I sank to my knees, gripping the dirt with both hands as darkness loomed, threatening to pull me under. Bile rose up my throat.

Lucas seized me and dragged me across the floor, and hurled me into the cage before I could recover and fight him again. I grunted as I hit the wall of bars on the other side of the cage and fought to shake off the dizziness that was invading every molecule of my body.

The metallic sound of the door slamming closed felt like a death knell.

“Lucas.” I moved as quickly as I could manage to the door, grabbed it and rattled it. It didn’t give. My head spun, my stomach rebelling as a dull throbbing ache spider-webbed across my skull. “Lucas, what is this?”

Lucas acknowledged me at last as he crouched before me, still nude, and reached between the bars to seize my face in a vicious grip.

“Stay awake.” He shook my head so violently I wanted to vomit. When I blinked several times, trying to stave off the dizziness and the looming darkness, he muttered, “I told Braxton the dose was too high.”

Dose?

It hit me that it wasn’t the mating heat making me feel dizzy. It wasn’t the wine either.

Lucas had drugged my drink.

I looked at the lock, cold realisation sinking in. That was the reason I wasn’t strong enough to fight him or break the lock on the cage door. That was the reason I hadn’t been able to shift to my wolf form again.

My fated mate had drugged me.

“Lucas,” I whispered, my voice failing me as I took stock of my situation and realised the only way out of this was to appeal to the one man who looked happy about it.

He looked so much like his father. Cold.

Callous. Cruel. Where was the man who had smiled so easily at me, who had been warm and kind to me, charming me into falling for him?

Had it all been an act, a mask to conceal the truth of him—that he was as vicious and cold as his father, as seduced by power and with a heart only big enough to love himself?

“Good.” He almost smiled, satisfaction that I wasn’t about to pass out written all over his smug face.

I wasn’t sure why he was so pleased about it, until a female stepped into the room, one I recognised from the party.

“I wanted you to be awake for this moment.” He did smile now, a grin that held no hint of the affection he had shown me over the years. It was as cold and brutal as his next words. “I wouldn’t want you missing me rejecting you.”

I gasped and reeled backwards, that word like a slap in the face.

Rejecting.

“Y-you’re re-re-rejecting me?” I stammered, my ears ringing as I felt as if I was losing my mind. My wolf side howled in agony as fiercely as my heart screamed in pain. “I don’t understand.”

I wasn’t sure I ever would.

I stared at him, struggling to make sense of the world and Lucas now, unable to recognise any shred of the male who had smiled and called me beautiful, who had lifted me up and was now tearing me down in the worst of ways.

“My stupid father made me wait—made me loyal to you—some female I’ve never known and never wanted.

” Each word that left his lips was like a knife in my chest, cleaving away another piece of my heart, bringing another memory of him into my mind to shatter together with my reality.

“I’ve waited almost half a century for this moment, wasting my maturity.

I should have killed the bastard sooner. ”

Shock knocked me on my backside. “You killed your own parents?”

Their deaths had been an accident, a fatal error while they had been running in the mountains.

The cold edge to his eyes and the satisfied twist of his lips chilled my blood.

It hadn’t been an accident.

It had been planned, by their own son.

Who was this male before me? Had I ever really known him?

I had been wrong. He wasn’t as cold and cruel as his father. He was worse. So much worse.

I couldn’t bear to look at him as the fragile pieces of my heart broke, as my instincts and my wolf side grieved, and everything I had known shattered before my eyes, revealing bleak reality that I had been blind to, and a future that was going to be far different from everything I had dreamed.

The chairs spaced around the barn, all facing the cage, and the grim scent of bodily fluids, told me my future would now be a nightmare.

People gathered here. To watch what?

“Don’t worry. You’ll fetch a nice price. One last big sale. Maybe you’ll even bring in enough to get my pack out of this hellhole.” Lucas reached through the bars and patted my cheek, the action condescending, as if I was just a pet to him now.

An animal he intended to sell at auction.

Just as he had sold others.

Tears welled, even though I fought them back, not wanting him to see how easily he had broken me as dread pooled inside me, so bleak and black that I was sinking into it, drowning as my mind filled with images straight out of a nightmare.

My throat closed as numbness swept through me, as some part of me receded into the darkness, curling inwards to protect itself.

This wasn’t happening. This was all just some terrible dream. Not reality.

Not reality.

Lucas loved me. He was my fated mate. He loved me.

No matter how many times I told myself that, the broken part of me refused to believe it, and something dark stirred within me in response, held back and muted by the drugs that blurred my vision and stole strength from my limbs.

“But we’re fated.” My words were weak even to my own ears, a foolish and desperate attempt to make him change his mind or maybe to make him wake up and realise what he was doing.

Part of me wanted to tell him this wasn’t funny, that he had taken this joke too far—the part of me that couldn’t comprehend that he was serious, that he was rejecting me, and that the love he had shown me was a lie.

“We’re fated,” I whispered, my voice strained as my brow furrowed and my throat closed. Tears streamed down my face. “We’re destined for each other. I’m meant to be your mate.”

“Fuck fate. I don’t want a mate.” He scoffed and pushed to his feet, coming to tower over me. “I reject you, Saphira Harper. You are not my mate and you never will be.”

Something inside me broke and I screamed out the pain, the fiery agony that had that scream coming out as a howl as my wolf side pushed to the surface, as instinct tore me apart.

He bent down and for a moment, I thought he would open the cage, but instead he seized my arm and ripped the bracelet from it. “You won’t be needing this anymore. Not where you’re going. It’s not like you’ll be travelling much. You’ll be lucky if you even leave the bed of whoever buys you.”

Bile rose again but I swallowed it, refusing to let Lucas see my terror as that dark, malevolent thing buried deep in the layers of numbness bared fangs at him.

“You can keep this though.” He tapped the pendant he had given me.

A token of his love .

A lie.

I wanted to rip it off, but I didn’t have the strength to lift my arms now. I didn’t have the strength to move. Numbing darkness slowly rolled up on me, and I wasn’t sure whether it was the drugs or the pain of rejection, but I welcomed it as Lucas clicked his fingers and the female approached him.

Naked.

He stood and seized hold of her by her nape and pushed her over, bending her towards me. His eyes held mine as he moved behind her, filled with hatred and anger, and so much heat as he thrust into her. The female moaned and gripped the bars of my cage as he pounded into her.

I tore my gaze away and slumped over, squeezing my eyes shut and pleading with fate to end this, to stop my suffering.

Every thrust my fated mate made into the female broke the ties that bound us a little more, stretching and snapping them, leaving me raw inside, howling in pain and clawing at my bare skin as I sobbed and rocked.

Lucas grunted and stilled, and the last thread twisted and snapped.

The female moaned and something heavy hit the dirt near me. I cracked my eyes open and stared at her as she lay on the ground, breathing heavily, her gaze glazed. Blood smeared on her trembling thighs.

Lucas crouched before me, grabbed my hair and jerked my head up, forcing my eyes to meet his as he smirked.

“Pray the male who buys you treats you half as nicely.”