Page 50 of Viper’s Reign

Her stunning red hair fanned out across the pillow makes my chest tighten, but I sneer, trying to suffocate the feeling. Clenching my hands into fists, I move closer… and catch the faint flutter of her eyelids.

A restless sleep? Her rosebud lips part the slightest bit, and she exhales a slow, controlled breath through them. That’s when it hits me—she’s not asleep. She’s pretending to be.

Why?

Maybe she’s not so naïve, after all.

I narrow my eyes and climb onto the bed beside her. The frame creaks under my weight. My muscles are tense, my chest a gaping hole. I’m ready to lunge, to grab her shoulders and shake the answers out of her… or gently push back a lock of her hair. I don’t know which yet, but I’m already reaching down when a sharp sting cuts into my thigh.

I immediately flinch back, hissing through my teeth.

“What the—” My head dips as the sensation registers, then flares into a hot, searing burn.

That’s when I see it. A needle jutting out of my thigh.

My first thought is to look for her, but the room is already starting to blur at the edges, and when I pull my eyes back to the bed, I can’t see much more than the hazy shape of a person.

“I’m sorry.” Her voice sounds so far away. “I’m so so sorry.”

Darkness bleeds in from the edges of my vision, my limbs feel increasingly heavy, my head throbs at the temples. And it clicks.

She drugged me.

Groaning, I fall toward the wall next to the headboard and just barely feel the button built into the wall there click under my weight.

I try to stay conscious long enough for help to arrive, but only one thought keeps replaying in my mind.

She drugged me. She actually drugged me.

And then, just before I fade into oblivion, one last thought squeaks in to join it.

Not so naïve, after all, Plamyashka moyo.

Impressive.

18

GRACE

The look of disbelief on Dimitri’s face slices through me like a blade. I keep apologizing over and over, but it’s meaningless.

I did this to him.

I had to.

Still, my stomach knots into itself. A cold sweat coats my skin. My legs are shaking, and my mind is spinning like crazy. Hell, I must be delirious, because I swear, for a split second before he slumps against the headboard, the disbelief on Dimitri’s face twists into the faintest hint of a smirk.

What the⁠—

Then, in the distance, I hear a flurry of heavy footsteps. My knotted stomach drops through the floor.

I need to leave.

Before I get a chance to act, the bedroom door explodes open, and a stream of armed men storm in, weapons raised.

No.

“Back away from the bed!”