Page 51 of Forbidden Wolf

I grasped his crimson coat.

“Don’t make me go back there,” I pleaded, burying my head in his chest. I couldn’t go through any more injury or pain. The past few weeks had stripped me of my self-respect. The master hellspawn felt closer to me every day and that disturbed me enough to accept help from Castus.

His body froze and his hands hovered on either side of me before his arms slowly closed around me. “Do not fear, my child. I will look after you.”

His hand stroked my hair and I shivered.

The master hellspawn was out there and the only place that was safe for me was inside the walls of this coven. I knew deep in my soul that if I set a foot outside, he would be waiting for me. Without Levi beside me, I would never be able to resist him.

“Cooper,” Castus barked. “Organise me a team. We should have been on top of this months ago. Bring me all the medical reports from when Tasha returned.”

“Right away.” Cooper turned and marched out of the door.

Three males had laid claim to me, each different and compelling. Nothing made sense to me anymore standing inside this crazy triangle of men. Castus was my coven leader and had never hidden his desire to own my body. The master hellspawn wanted to put me on a throne beside him. Levi was the only one of the men that I wanted to be with, but he chose duty over love. What destroyed the last of my soul was that he only showed me affection that last day to mark me, then he walked away. He didn’t want me. He just didn’t want anyone else to have me.

Castus lifted me and carried me to the huge deep red sofa that stretched nearly an entire wall of his office. His touch was reassuring as he settled on the sofa beside me, stroking my hair.

“You always resisted me, Tasha. I told you long ago that I could keep you here beside me. Now, whatever is out there has broken you.” His hand stopped and fisted my hair, tugging it until I wanted to crawl away. “For that I will destroy it. I alone am the only one allowed to break your spirit. That pleasure will only ever belong to me.”

His words were nothing more than a quiet muttering. In my head, I saw the master hellspawn standing at the gates of the coven ready to tear them down. He was coming for me and there was nowhere else to run.

“Castus, I need to speak to my mum.” I turned my face up to stare at him, a tear trickling down my cheek. He craved emotional pain, so I gave that to him.

Mum had been the only one who had understood the voices before.

He wiped my tear with his thumb, a vague smile playing on his face. “And what would you give me for such a gift?”

“What could you need?” I replied. “I belong to you and everything I own is yours.”

The fire that I was playing with began to burn my fingers.

“That is true, Tasha. Everyone in this coven belongs to me. Yet you have evaded me in the past.”

I blinked, feigning confusion. “I don’t understand. I have done everything you asked of me.”

It was true. The war thwarted his perverted desires.

He studied me with predator precision, his eyes roaming over me like a lie detector. Before the emptiness consumed me, I would have been squirming under the intensity of that gaze. Now, all he saw was the same shell that everyone else viewed.

“Maybe I have been too harsh on you,” he muttered and returned to stroking my hair again. “I will send for your mother tomorrow. Perhaps she can nurture you back to health.”

Castus left a few hours later to brief his new hunter team. Before he left, he kept running the tips of his elongated claws over the pad of his thumb in an excited fashion, his tongue flicking over his top lip.

My legs shook as I stood at his window, watching over the landscape all around us. Castus had built this coven high in the mountains so that it could be safeguarded over the centuries. That was before technology evolved and man learnt to fly. Our walls had been impenetrable, but weapons had become deadlier and more destructive.

Lowering my defences, I allowed my awareness to flare into the vastness around our coven castle. Flares of red were interspaced throughout the forest below. In the centre of them was a pulsating darkness that I’d only seen once before.

An emotion flickered in my stomach for the first time in months, fear coiling deep inside me. He was here, waiting for me. The master hellspawn.

My fingers gripped the window ledge and I felt his eyes devouring me. I swayed forward as if entranced by his presence.

The darkness increased in size and it felt like he was screaming at me, telling me he was there. The mark on my shoulder throbbed and burned and Levi’s presence surrounded me.

From being emotionally numb, now I sensed too much.

I gasped, doubling over as my body trembled violently. I stood in the centre of three men, and the thought of them tearing my soul apart terrified me.

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