Page 5 of The Lycan King's Captive

She shivered now, her body trembling on the thin mattress in the cell across from mine. She lay flat on her back, her head turned slightly toward me. Depending on their mood, Roman’s men alternated between plunging the basement into total darkness and blasting it with light. Right now, the naked bulbs buzzed like hornets, giving me a clear view of my fellow prisoner.

Even in the throes of the fever, she was lovely. Though she was tall for a woman and slenderly built, she had curves in all the right places. Her sweat-dampened clothes clung to high, firm breasts and gently rounded hips.

My cock stirred, which was both inconvenient and inappropriate, given the circumstances. I drew a knee up and forced my attention to the safer, more neutral parts of her body.

Dark brown hair spread around her head, framing delicate features. In the beginning, when the bite on her neck still wept, she’d looked at me with bleary eyes, so I knew her irises were a clear, bright green. An unusual color on anyone. I’d expected blue.

But the green suited her. It was a pity I’d probably never seen it again.

I rested my head against the brick wall and inhaled, dragging her scent into my lungs. Under the grime and sweat was something light and feminine.

Lavender. That was it. There was another scent, too. The sharp, astringent bite of antiseptic.

A doctor, then. She’d saved me upstairs, when I lay half dead in Roman’s study with the stench of my burnt flesh in my nose.

Then another scent had surrounded me—a mix of flowers and band-aids. It had driven away the sickness and hurt, calming my inner beast and letting me relax for the first time in…

Well, a long damn time.

Gentle hands had touched me, and a soft voice had pulled me from the black haze that threatened to swallow me whole.

She brought me back, and now I had to watch her die.

Roman would pay for that.

He played a dangerous game, dragging a human physician into our war. She was bound to have a family. Her ring finger was bare, but someone so accomplished and beautiful almost certainly had a man. Someone to report her missing. Roman was powerful, but he’d let his ambition make him sloppy. His fellow alphas might be afraid to cross him, but that could change if human detectives started snooping around their packs.

Raw anticipation shot through me. The only thing more satisfying than killing Roman myself would be watching his alphas do it for me.

A door overhead opened, and booted footsteps clunked down the stairs along with a booming voice.

“And how are my prisoners today?” One of Roman’s guards—a redheaded son of a bitch named Carl—appeared with a metal bucket, which he dragged across the bars of my cell before smirking at me. “Well, don’t you look like shit.”

That makes two of us, asshole. I kept my expression neutral, but I didn’t bother smothering the hate I knew burned in my eyes.

“Nothing to say?” His smirk widened to a grin. “Guess you’re not really the talkative type these days, huh?” He laughed at his own joke, then swung toward the female’s cell.

I sat up straighter, ignoring the stabbing pain in my ribs.

He stared at the woman’s prone figure for a minute, then muttered, “Dumb bitch. It was stupid as hell to come out here alone.” He turned back to me. “That’s the problem with these modern feminist types. Always thinking they’re a match for a man.”

Contempt rose thick in my throat. Apparently, he’d forgotten the woman had been outnumbered five to one in the study. Then again, math probably wasn’t his strong suit.

He unlocked my cell door and stepped inside. Yellow rolled over his pale blue eyes as he looked me over. “Not so high and mighty now, are you, naked and sitting in your own filth?” He gave the bucket in his hand a shake. “Got your toilet for the next couple of days.”

I regarded him steadily, letting promises leak into my gaze. Carl and I were going to meet again someday. I wasn’t sure when. I just knew he was going to die when it happened.

He swallowed and shuffled back a step. Then he seemed to realize what he’d done, because he charged into the cell like a clumsy bear. He went to the corner, switched out my shit bucket for the new one, then straightened with a heaving chest. “Keep looking at me like that and I’ll break your fucking jaw.”

He wouldn’t. Roman had pushed too hard and he knew it. His men hadn’t roughed me up since they brought me back downstairs. The reprieve was almost certainly temporary, but for now I was relatively safe.

Which meant I was free to look at the cocksucker any way I wished.

He had trouble holding my stare. His brows drew together, and his breathing grew labored. After a few seconds of struggle, he dropped his eyes to my chin and tightened his grip on the bucket handle. “I should toss this in your face, you arrogant prick.”

I braced myself for him to do it. Something told me he wasn’t smart enough to know the contents of the bucket were just as likely to kill me as another beating. The doctor couldn’t save me if my wounds got infected again. At the thought, I looked beyond Carl to her cell.

Her green eyes were open.

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