Page 15 of Ravenous

Tomorrow Lia would figure a way out of this bind. She’d dosomething. She had to. What if her own plot didn’t come to fruition?

Forcing the anxious thoughts from her mind, she curled into her plush pillow. The day began to fade away, and she settled in on the cusp of sleep—

Shnickt.The lock turning.

The suite door whispered. Someone leaving—or entering just now.

Lia’s eyes snapped open. The castle’s incense choked the air, blunting everyother scent, but her dread had weight.

Cold. Malice.Male.

She wasn’t alone. How? Who could have breached the most guarded room in this stronghold?

Dark liquid seeped under the door, trailing toward her rug. Blood. A lot of it.

Someone had slain Andrei and his guards and was with her now. Her skin tightened, nerves flaring awake.Co?tin?Had he finally snapped?

Her vision adjusted and found a shape out of a nightmare: a towering warrior in a bear-skull helmet, fang tines down the mask, one eye burning silver. His shoulders heaved, the room shrinking around him.

She drew in air to scream; his hand was already over her mouth, the other pinning her wrists. A gravelly voice rasped, “Silence.”

She thrashed, but his grip was like steel.

To an unseen accomplice, he grated, “Now, Ink.”

Dizziness hit as she felt herself teleported. Her chamber disappeared, replaced by a dank cave lit by torches and random veins of sunlight.

Ravinelun.

An incubus had teleported her and her abductor! When that demon departed with a grave nod, she turned to the Berserker. His helmet’s metal fangs concealed his face, but she again sensed how lethal he was.

Dear gods, he’d forced her into the heart of the bears’ den. And all around her, Berserkers snarled, hungry for their prayer:

Death.

Chapter 8Arctos

The vampire is even weaker than I anticipated.

Arctos yanked her along to the court, shame hot under his armored chest plate. His take had been meager, his incursion too easy. And just seven kills to show for it.

Seven.

Would he hover at the brink of immortality over one kill? He wished he could wring this leech’s neck and live forever, but she was no challenging foe. Arctos would never dishonor Wóden by offering such a tribute in his name. Besides, Queen Yrsa had ordered him to deliver this parasite, and so he would.

As he dragged the vampire along, Arctos tried to see the court through her eyes. No banners or statues filled it, only cold rock and guards coiled tight with violence, every one of them riding the razor’s edge of a Berserker shift. Rage shimmered just beneath their skin, pupils blown wide, breaths too loud in the vaulted space.

Other factions in the Skein dismissed Berserkers as lowly animals, but that misconception was a strength.

Animals survived.

Those guards narrowed their eyes at the pale female in her nearly transparent gown. Arctos scowled to read interest in their gazes—reluctant, yes, but interest all the same. For a leech whose frail appearance screameddecadence?

As Ink had said,I’d rather fuck a basilisk.

Why would Bloodreach wish to breedthiscreature? If she was the best of her kind, then the Berserkers needed to attack them now and be done with it.

As Arctos forced her farther underground, even he—with his limited mortal senses—could hear her erratic heartbeat. Her wan skin sheened with sweat, and the incense clinging to her seemed to thicken. Her gaze darted.