Page 109 of Captive Prize

I tried to argue, but he shrugged and said she made her choice.

Pavel and Kostya crowded around me, making sure I didn’t lunge for Gregor. It was tempting. But I knew he wasn’t lying.

Gregor was a man of his word. If she agreed to the marriage, then he would’ve held up his end as soon as the ink was dry and her ring in place.

Zoya was just stubborn enough to make this difficult.

She had refused me, and I was going to find out why. I stormed through the house. Heat rising from my chest to my neck and crawling up the sides of my face.

If she was being sent away, there was no longer a point in keeping my distance. I had agreed to marry her, so there was no trying to prove I wasn’t thinking with my cock.

Maybe that was what she needed.

Could I fuck some common sense into her?

The guard at the door pushed back his shoulders and acted like he was going to stand up to me.

I glared at him, bared my teeth, and pulled a blade from the back of my belt, twirling the freshly honed steel between my fingers.

The color drained from his face as he shrank down, then pushed his way past me and fled down the hall, probably pissing himself.

A smarter man, a man who had more control, would have stopped outside the door, collected himself, and then calmly entered the room. I was so far beyond that man, it didn’t even register as an option.

I had the forethought not to walk into that room armed. Even in my haze of rage, I would not hurt her, but at that moment, I didn’t trust her not to steal my knife and bury it in my back.

I stabbed the blade into the wooden doorframe.

With one quick yank, I ripped the door open, and then slammed it shut behind me. It rattled so hard I wouldn’t have been surprised if it fell off the hinges or shattered the frame.

The gods answered my anger with a lightning strike that flashed in the window and a rumble of thunder.

Zoya was right where I left her. Handcuffed to the goddamn bed like the captured queen she was. She stared at me with a defiance that fired up my temper and tightened my fingers into fists at my sides.

No one had ever made me this mad. No one had ever angered me beyond fucking reason before. But there she was, relaxed on the bed, her ankles crossed while she gave me a flat, bored expression.

She didn’t even flinch at the slamming door. Didn’t shift. Just stared at me, her gaze dragging over me like I was interrupting her day. Like I wasn’t the reason she was still breathing.

“Back for another lecture?” she drawled, lifting one delicate wrist and rattling the cuff against the decorative but strong wrought iron bars of the headboard. “Or did you finally decide tojust kill me and get it over with? After all, I won’t marry you, so what use do I have, right?”

I stepped closer to her, slow and deadly, my muscles coiled tight, ready to pounce. “Don’t tempt me.”

She smirked, a cold, cruel sneer, before she opened her lips and spat pure venom. “Oh? And here I thought you preferred to chain me to the bed forever, like a proper caveman. I’m assuming your plan was to give me some time out of this bed? Just enough to cook and clean, like a good little wife?”

Her lips twisted in disgust as she bit out the word wife.

My hands flexed at my sides as anger crawled up my spine. “Is that an invitation,printsessa?”

Her eyes flashed, but she didn’t take the bait. She wasn’t going to give me the satisfaction of a fight, not when I could win.

She was far too smart for that.

Instead, she dragged her handcuff over the wrought iron, metal dragging on metal making an ugly, grating noise. Deliberately filling the space between us with a sound that was worse than nails on a chalkboard.

Only Zoya could turn her imprisonment into my punishment.

“I’m not marrying you.” Her words came out sharp, singular, and absolute.

I bent over her, bracing both of my hands on the mattress, caging her in before I leaned in closer, my words dropping to a lethal whisper. “What the fuck makes you think that you have a choice? You will do as you are told.”

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