Her Dark Seduction

Prologue

The metallic smell of blood—my blood—faded, but the screams remained, seeping from the stones in the wall and echoing around me.

They were the cries of my fellow inmates, both those who’d preceded me and the ones who would follow.

The darkness in my cell mirrored the black void in my heart, which had long ago swallowed up any hope.

As the screams gave way to low moans, a faint scuffling sound grew louder, then a shape shifted in front of my eyes.

I was not alone.

I took a breath, wheezing against the stone floor, my body shuddering with pain. Then the shape turned. Two silver pinpricks flashed, then sharp, yellow teeth gleamed in the cold light from the distant moon. I bared my own teeth, hissing until the shape drew back.

One animal against another.

For that was what I’d been reduced to—an animal, awaiting destruction. The fortress that I had spent my entire life constructing around myself, no longer existed. For I had brought about its destruction.

My body had never been my own. It had been the property of others since birth, a commodity to be used to suit their purposes. But they would never own my mind.

Remember my darling child—they can destroy our bodies, but they will never destroy our souls.

I winced as I recalled my beloved Maman’s words, uttered in a quiet whisper the last time I saw her alive. They were the words spoken to a child of little understanding—the last words she said to me before she died.

Only now did I understand her meaning, as I awaited her fate. They had been a warning, from mother to child, from the only living soul who had loved me for myself.

Perhaps the only love that existed—that could ever exist—was the love that a mother had for her child.

My child…

I swallowed the knot of despair that threatened to overcome me. But what purpose would it serve to succumb? Whether I despaired or not, I was, like my beloved Maman, about to die at the hands of the man who owned me, separated from my own child.

A hoarse cry echoed from deep within the dungeons, and I shifted, the cold air contrasting with the white hot shards of pain in my shattered arm. My body was lost. Twisted and broken, it lay on the floor of my cell as my mind drifted above it and looked down at the pathetic creature I had become.

It would be all too easy to let myself slip away, to surrender to the pain.

Yet I had to fight.

For him. The man I loved—even if he had never loved me.

What would they do if I betrayed him? These men who, with cold detachment, had told me of their ability to keep a man alive, screaming for days. Would his screams join my own, and those of the long-dead victims who haunted me in this vile place?

Tomorrow they would destroy me, but I’d never surrender my silence. I would take their blows and field their questions, and though I might never see the sun again, my death would bring about life—the life of my beloved.

Spots of gray stained the walls as the light bled from the first rays of the sun, picking out the shadows of the pock-marked texture of the stone. With a squeal, my companion turned, claws scraping, a blur of a tail disappearing into the shadows.

An echo of footsteps whispered in the distance before growing louder, the rhythm of a man with a purpose.

Dawn had broken.

They were coming for me.