Page 8 of The Captive and the First Blood Game
Reyna had nearly made it to the door the moment Harrington lost his grip on B. She lunged forward, landing like a cat on all fours above Reyna.
“No. No, stop,” she shrieked, clawing at B’s face.
B used one hand and held her down, exposing her fangs, and then sank them into Reyna’s arm.
It all happened in slow motion. The feeling of adrenaline pumping through her system. The vamp venom she hadn’t gotten earlier from the IV flooding her bloodstream and taking over. Tears streaming down her face as B drank her blood. The terror and disbelief and pain.
B was forcing herself on Reyna to drain her blood against her will. At least as an escort she hadchosenthis. She had accepted it as her fate. And Harrington…he took the blood without her consent, but this was…this was worse. This was hell. This was actual hell.
Just when she thought it was over, an electrical shock pulsed through them. She and B screamed. B fell in a heap on the floor, twitching and shaking. Her head cocked to the side, her eyes wide and wild.
Reyna pushed away from B, clutching her arm and shaking from head to toe. It had stopped. He’d stopped it. She had thought that was the end. She didn’t care how he had stopped it, just that he had.
Harrington stepped over B. “What a pleasant demonstration.”
Reyna curled in on herself. Her body was trembling involuntarily, and her heart stuttered in her chest. Harrington’s shadow covered her frame. She skittered farther away from him, pressing her aching head into the glass. She needed to be away from here…far away from here. But Harrington would never let her go. He’d never leave her alone. She was going to be kept like this forever.
He tipped her chin up so she had to meet his keenly intelligent eyes. “You have been living in privilege. You think that there is nothing I could do to you that hasn’t already been done, and you are wrong. I need your blood, but only your blood. I don’t need your mind. I don’t need you happy. I certainly don’t need you living in luxury. This is your fate if you continue to displease me.”
Chapter Four
Reyna sank back into her bed with her knees tucked up under her chin. Her tears had finally halted hours after she’d been deposited back in her room. The nurse had stuck around long enough to bandage her up, but vampire bites healed more quickly than average injuries. Usually within a couple of hours, it would fade away to just a thin scar. And sometimes the scars wouldn’t even last. She had a feeling this one would. Scar physically, yes, but definitely emotionally. She wasn’t soon going to forget the feeling of B biting her and the sheer horror of almost dying.
The rush was already wearing off from the bite, and she was crashing hard. Harrington had lamented the fact that she had never gotten addicted to the venom. A lot of people did. There was an entire group of people who were desperate for their next fix. He couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t that way.
Reyna didn’t say but always suspected it was because her first bite had been from Beckham. He’d told her at the time that emotional connection intensified the reaction. She hadn’t thought to wonder if he knew that from personal experience, but as she sat in her bed with a massive headache coming on, she let herself go to that dark place.
All the maybes and what-ifs flew through her mind. What if Beckham was better off without her? Maybe he’d loved someone else. What if biting Penelope had been like this? Reyna shuddered at the thought of Penelope. She was the mayor’s daughter and had all the privilege and entitlement that came with that life. She and Beckham had pretended to be romantically involved as a cover for his involvement with the rebellion, a group known as Elle. But knowing it hadn’t been real didn’t make it any easier to think about them together, or about the fact that he had drunk Penelope’s blood. Maybe he really did have feelings for Penny, even though he’d claimed he didn’t. Maybe he didn’t want to find Reyna. What if he’d orchestrated this whole thing?
She squeezed her eyes shut and rocked back and forth. No. She couldn’t think these things. This was what Harrington wanted. He had broken her. He’d put her in a situation that had been beyond anything she’d ever had to handle, and the trauma was coloring all of her thoughts. He wanted her to lose it. He wanted her to turn into a complacent little pet.
She didn’t feel complacent after Harrington’s demonstration today. She knew now what he would do to her if she acted out: he would shatter her mind.
She could take pain if she had to. She could survive whatever he threw at her. But she would not fall. She would not be broken.
She’d rather die than succumb to Harrington.
…
Reyna woke up the next day with a clear head.
She hadn’t even realized how depressed she had been until the fog lifted. Trapped in a world with no answers and no hope, she’d been lost. Floating along a river of self-doubt and not even looking for a way to dock. Then it all came back to her—she needed to get out of here. She needed to find a way back to her life.
It started today.
With renewed zeal, Reyna spent the next couple of days plotting. She wouldn’t be let out of the room again until Monday. The nurse would come and get her. She usually had all of breakfast and then uninterrupted conversation with the nurse, not that she’d ever taken advantage of it. Maybe Reyna could get some information out of her or at least try to appeal to her sympathies. The woman had looked afraid when Reyna was dragged off after having her IVs ripped out. There was no time like the present to use that to her advantage.
She had a mental map of the corridors she’d traversed in the building, but she didn’t know what to do about the little device embedded in her arm. She could feel it right under the skin when she ran her hand over her left forearm. It was about a centimeter long and roughly the width of a grain of rice. If she’d had something sharp, she probably could have cut it out.
Reyna didn’t know how long this escape plot would take. Collecting enough information to find an exit was already a big enough challenge. Removing a device with a blunt object was another thing altogether. She was done being complacent, though. She would get out of here.
With a huff, she threw on the provided white workout clothes, walked into the adjoining exercise room, and turned on the treadmill. She had never been someone who worked out before this, but the cardio would come in handy later. Even if she couldn’t outrun a vampire, she’d take any edge she could get.
She was sweating and panting by the time she finished her workout. She was leaning over with her hands on her knees, trying not to fall flat on her face, when she heard the distinctive sound of the door clicking.
“Who’s there?” she asked.
No one answered. When she walked back into the bedroom, no one was inside. Just a black garment bag was laid out on the bed, along with a handwritten note.
