Page 13 of The Lycan King's Captive

But I would have lost. Speaking mind-to-mind with Abby had sapped my strength. Black had hovered at the edges of my consciousness as my body toyed with the idea of passing out.

Quite the hero.

My fainting spell got Roman’s attention off Abby, though, so I sagged when he ordered Carl and Robertson to drag me to my cell and I let my eyes roll back in my head when Roman followed, his brows drawn tight.

He must have decided I looked worse than usual, because he ordered Carl to fetch Abby’s medical bag. I wanted to seize Roman and scream that I didn’t need medicine. I needed food and water and twenty-four hours without some asshole using me as a punching bag.

But Roman didn’t care about making me healthy. He just wanted me alive.

It wasn’t much of a stretch to play half dead as Carl returned with the bag, but it was hard to pretend when Roman forced Abby to treat me again. He didn’t let her dress, so she knelt nude and trembling as she injected me with another round of antibiotics. It wasn’t lost on me that he was making her save the male who violated her. Fixing her tormentor so I could torment her again.

I’d tried to reach her—to tell her I wouldn’t let it happen—but I’d been too weak to make a mental connection. So I’d stayed on the ground with the sting of her needle in my hip and nothing but deafening silence between us.

And even now, hours later, that silence remained. Not because I couldn’t speak. Her drugs had worked well enough.

No, I was quiet now because I didn’t know what to say.

She hadn’t moved since Roman and the others left. She lay in her cage with her back to me, her knees drawn up and the curve of her spine a delicate line down her back. Rust-colored blood smeared her hips where I’d touched her, and the sight made Roman’s taunt echo in my head.

“Not so high and mighty now, Cyrus. It turns out all that blue blood is red.”

That was his twisted plan: force me to take Abby until she conceived. Then he could…what? Use my child as a weapon against me? Hold it for ransom?

I stared at the red on Abby’s hips. For all I knew, she was already pregnant. A surge of protectiveness rose in my chest, the feeling so strong I caught my breath.

Two things were certain. She was not giving birth in this basement, and I was going to mount Roman’s head over my fucking fireplace.

As satisfying as the second item would be, it couldn’t happen until I figured out the first. I looked around for the thousandth time, willing my sleep-deprived brain to come up with an escape plan. I’d tested every bar of the cage, searching for weak points, but the steel was thick and the bars had been set in the concrete when the floor was poured. At full strength, no cage could hold me. But I hadn’t been at full strength for a very long time.

The door upstairs squealed.

Fuck.

One set of boots stomped down. Carl. The lumbering gait gave him away before his shock of red hair appeared. He carried a plastic grocery bag and he trailed the scent of body wash as he went to Abby’s cell and unlocked it.

“Hey,” he called to her. “Get up. Roman says you have to eat.”

She didn’t move.

He swore and wrenched the door open. “You hear me?” He stepped inside and gave the bag a little shake. “I know you’re hungry. That first shift kicks everyone’s ass.”

Nothing. She was so still, my heart leapt in my chest. “Abby?” Even speaking mind-to-mind, it felt odd to use her name. Too intimate, as if I hadn’t earned the right to be so familiar. “Are you all right?”

Carl dropped the bag and stepped closer. “I can see you breathing. You’re not fooling anyone.”

Relief washed over me, but only for a second. Carl was stupid, but he just smart enough to know it and that made him mean.

He nudged her thigh with his boot. “If you don’t eat, Roman will kick my ass when he gets back.”

She stayed as she was.

Another nudge. Carl went to his haunches. He lifted a hand, and it seemed like he would touch her, but he only let it hover above her hip. He spoke in a murmur, his voice thick. “I have an idea.”

Every single one of my nerve endings went on high alert. He’d showered for a reason, the fucker.

No. Fuck no. This wasn’t happening.

“I turned off the cameras,” he said, his breathing growing heavy. “Roman said you’re off limits until that cocksucker knocks you up, but I can’t wait that long. Watching you come made me horny as fuck.” His tone filled with resentment. “Knowing Roman, he’ll just take you for himself. He hasn’t stopped talking about you. That’s what he’s doing now, meeting with some other alphas so he can brag about his new female.”

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