Grief had been an ocean, and he’d been drowning in it for three weeks.
He’d barely breathed, barely slept, barely thought. All he’d done was work, work, work.
Ryker had allowed his soldierly duties to bury him. Better that than to feel his emotions. The anger. The frustration. The grief. They had all battered against him like endless waves until he’d ignored them entirely.
He hadn’t even seen his wife until now. He hadn’t asked about her, which, in hindsight, was a grave mistake.
Fuck, he hadn’t even known she was being held in The Pit.
Like a gods-damned idiot, Ryker had assumed Brynleigh would be incarcerated in either Silver or Black Prison. If that had been the case, he would’ve come and dealt with her once his anger cooled off. If it had cooled off.
But The Pit?
Gods-damned awful, terrible, nightmarish things happened here. This place was reserved for the worst of the worst.
And his wife was here.
A prisoner who, if the bruises and prohiberis manacles were any indication, was being tortured daily.
His heart twisted into a painful knot as he studied his wife.
His lying, deceitful wife.
Conflicted was too simple of a word to describe how he felt about the hell where he currently resided.
Ryker hadn’t known a heart could hurt like this. He hadn’t known that in the blink of an eye, love could evolve into a monster hell-bent on destroying him from within.
Brynleigh inhaled sharply, the sound drawing Ryker from his thoughts. She blinked, a trail of crimson running down her leg from where a silver knife was lodged in her thigh.
“H-h-how?”
How indeed.
Stepping back, he forced that steel mask he’d donned earlier to remain in place. He had replayed those moments with horrifying clarity a hundred times since that fateful night.
Still, his next words tasted like ash as he forced them out of his dry mouth. “I wasn’t asleep.”
Time and again, he’d analyzed that night, but it still felt like the worst kind of nightmare.
The dippingof the mattress drew Ryker out of his slumber. The fae captain cracked open an eye, watching his beautiful vampire strode towards the window with predatory, silent grace. Gods above, she was stunning. His cock hardened as he studied her. He’d had her twice before they fell asleep a few hours ago, but he still wanted her. He suspected he’d always want her.
She was his.
Brynleigh drew the curtain shut and turned towards the bed. Instead of coming back, she froze. Her back straightened, and she inhaled sharply.
The air in the room shifted; a too-quiet calm before a storm.
Ryker opened both eyes and followed Brynleigh’s gaze. A frown tugged at his lips. A cat was in the room. Strange. He blinked, wondering if he was dreaming, but the feline was still there when he looked again.
His magic swirled in his veins. A warning. A harbinger. A premonition of what was to come.
It was too little, too late.
Before Ryker could act, a flash of white light erupted from the cat-that-wasn’t-a-cat.
In a heartbeat, Ryker’s world turned upside down once again.
Thiswas the moment he couldn’t stop thinking about, the one that had haunted his nightmares, the one that had him questioning every single thing Brynleigh had ever told him.