My stomach twisted, and my heart ached for what she must be going through. But she’d known it was going to suck. She’d chosen this path, and regardless of what she was going through now, I knew she’d choose it again if given the chance. She was not a woman who took the easy way out, not when people were counting on her. He couldn’t have kept her from going.
He wouldn’t want to hear any of that, though. He was a man of action, and right now he probably felt as helpless as I did. He needed a way to support her.
“Okay, then…” I inched closer, level with him now and working my way in front of him. “So what can you do to help her? Obviously you can’t go to her, not with the curse’s magic forcing you to stay within the kingdom’s borders. You can’t fight her battles. So what can you do with the resources you have to make things easier for her?”
He dropped his hands, hunched over, and shook his head, at a loss.
I glanced back at Leala and lifted my eyebrows. Need a little help here, I thought.
“Do you know what is very confusing for people?” Leala said, walking into the room like she was as comfortable as could be. How the fuck did she manage it? “My kink.”
My mouth dropped open.
“Love, it’s not really the time,” I said through my teeth.
“I like pain,” she continued, coming to stand right beside me. She wrung her hands, her knuckles white. “I get off on it. Most people do not understand that. It makes them incredibly uncomfortable.”
A blast of power had Leala and I both hunching for a moment. Alphas at full power were no joke.
“She is not you,” he said.
“No, but she could be.” She held out a hand, indicating the master for some reason. “Right now she is feeling your misery, right? It is making her pain worse, I should think. All due respect, sir, but it is probably acting like a weight on her ankle, pulling her down deeper. It’s not helping. Instead…maybe put aside how much it pains you to feel what she’s going through and feed her uplifting emotions. Feed her your love and support—”
“I’m doing that. I’m trying to ease her suffering as best I can.”
“Okay then…” Leala stalled for a moment, shooting me an anxious look.
“Pleasure,” I blurted. “Not just love and support, but downright pleasure. Right, Leala? Isn’t that where you were going with that?”
“Yes.” Leala smiled. “Yes! Feed her pleasure. Make her pain mix with pleasure, and it won’t be as gruesome for her.”
I squinted as I nodded. “It’ll probably be a mind-fuck for her at first, but if she can feel it’s you—whom she trusts more than anyone in the world—yeah, I can see that working, sir. It’s worth a shot at any rate, right? It’ll dull the pain somewhat. And it’ll help her think about you, which is to think about home…”
The master’s face came up slowly, his eyes bleary and soaked with guilt and misery. He focused in on Leala, and I’d be damned if she didn’t stand straight and tall before him. That woman was majestic.
Suddenly, though, he let out a breath and sagged, bracing his hands on the bed.
“It’s over,” he said softly, his deep, gravelly voice thick. “She has passed out.”
“I’ve passed out before, sir,” Leala quipped. “I’ve gone so hard with it that I have passed out from pain…while still deriving pleasure from it. I think you can help her, sir. I really do. But you’ll have to be strong, sir. You’ll have to completely shove away your own pain so that you can give her only your purest pleasure.”
Ooh, she was good. She was giving him a way to help and making him feel like he was powerful and strong for going for it. Great goddess and her kinky men, she was the most valuable player in this little meeting of minds.
He looked up again, his fierce golden eyes taking her in. I could barely remember the blue they’d been before the curse—before he’d forced a shift and his retinas retained the original color of his dragon’s scales, which had been burned black.
He nodded once, curtly. He’d do it. Hopefully he’d succeed, and it would help both he and Finley.
Leala nudged me with her elbow. Whoops, shit, my turn.
“And the other way you can help is to prepare an arsenal for when she finds her way back here,” I said quickly. “She asked me to make sure you were freeing the shifters. That you were monitoring the efforts to cure your kingdom of the sickness unleashed by the curse. She made a deal with the insufferable demon king so that you—”
“Yes, yes, I heard you outside the door.” He stood, and I realized I’d gotten much too close. The prince absolutely loomed over me. “I hope that she does not come back—for her sake—but I will honor her wishes. Of course I will—looking after my people is my duty.”
“Yes, sir.” I rammed Leala with my shoulder so she’d get moving and we could get some breathing room. “Absolutely, sir. Perfect. She would be proud of that.”
“You will come with me. Get some rest. We’ll start at noon.” He rolled his shoulders, and power oozed from his mighty frame. “And every time they hurt her, I will brutally kill one of their demons. I will not suffer her ill treatment without some sort of recourse.”
I wasn’t sure whether that was a good idea—I’d need to think on it—but it was certainly a satisfying idea. I wanted to watch. Those demons had had it coming for too long.
It wasn’t until I got outside of the door that my brain zeroed in on what else he’d said.
“Wait, I have to go?” I stopped and turned to look through the open door. It shut in my face, and the lock clicked.
“That went well.” Leala pulled me along. “I hope that pleasure thing works. It might have been a long shot.”
“I have to go?” I thunked down the stairs on wooden legs. “Why do I have to go?”
She clicked her tongue. “Of course you have to go. You’re supposed to keep tabs on him for her.”
“Which I just did. I don’t actually have to look over his shoulder.”
“It’ll be fine. Now, you heard the master—go get some rest. He’s finally about to be the prince he needs to be. We just have to hope the miss finds her way out when she needs to.”
FIVE
FINLEY
I lay sprawled out on my back in the straw, looking up at the low ceiling pocked with shadow. The lights had been turned on earlier, waking me up, but we were all the way in the back of the long room, and there were plenty of pockets and patches of darkness around us. None large enough to hold another stairwell or some sort of escape hatch, though. This area was a dead end. The stairs I’d come down seemed to be the only way back up.
The last traces of pain slowly left my body. Last night’s beating had been a real doozy. I shuddered to consider how long it would’ve taken me to heal naturally. Or if I would’ve at all.
The dungeon festered quietly around me. Until Jedrek realized I was awake.
“This place stinks.” He sat in the corner with his nose crinkled. Dirt marred his face, and his hair was matted in clumps. I doubted I was much better off. “It’s dirty.”