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.
A redheaded man stood a few feet away from Brynleigh, and she… wasn’t screaming. Why the fuck wasn’t she screaming?
Ryker’s heart thundered like a bear banging against the bars of its cage. He recognized the newcomer from the Masked Ball as the man who’d danced with Brynleigh.
Danger, danger, danger.
A roaring filled his ears.
Shocked, he listened as Brynleigh conversed with the shifter. As if she wasn’t surprised by his arrival.
As if she had… expected him.
Icy horror coursed through Ryker’s veins, freezing him in place and forcing him to watch as his new wife of less than twenty-four hours betrayed him. The one person he thought he could trust, the one person to whom he’d given his heart, took it and ripped it to shreds.
He couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything at all except listen.
“Love makes us do stupid things,” the shifter said. “I should know.”