They were monsters. Sadistic, evil monsters Luc had never wanted to join. Ones I despised with every fiber of my being.
“You’re the only one he listens to,” Luc’s father said in that same lifeless, low voice on my other side. “Agree to bring Luciano back to the family, and these kittens will not fuck him to the end of the ritual.”
My head spun. My heart pounded hard.
The kitten—a woman I knew had been coerced and manipulated through Monarch mind-controlled techniques to disassociate herself so she could release her inhibitions and become the perfect beta sex slave to serve the vile men in this House—moaned and grunted, being as vocal as she could as she rode Luc, jostling his body and rattling his chains. Tears burned my eyes. Misery seared my chest. I swallowed hard to keep from vomiting.
“What will it be?” Luc’s father snapped.
The woman began shrieking in Italian. Words I didn’t even want to try to translate.
I dropped my head, shaking through sobs I couldn’t control. Luc would hate me forever if I made any kind of deal with his sick parents to bring him back to this repulsive family.
“They pumped him full of erectile dysfunction drugs,” his mother whispered in my ear. “And GHB to enhance his arousal. He can go all night like this. I wonder how many of those beta slaves are fertile?”
Oh God, no…
“I’ll do it,” I gasped. A new wave of nausea rolled through me. “I-I’ll bring him back to the family. Just stop this. Stop raping him. He’s your son, for God’s sake.”
A victorious look passed over Luc’s mother’s face as she glanced past me to her husband. Luc’s father simply nodded, clenched his jaw, then motioned to someone below.
I held my breath and looked back down. Another black-draped figure moved around the altar and tapped the woman’s shoulder. She slowed her gyrating long enough to angle toward the figure. Then she nodded, leaned forward, and pressed her mouth against Luc’s as she picked up her pace.
My vision turned red, and that scream inside me burst free. “You bastard! You said you’d stop!” I jerked back even harder on the hands holding me. “You said it would be over!”
Luc’s father’s grip around my wrist squeezed so hard, I grunted and gasped as pain radiated up my arm and slammed into me. But it was his icy words in my ear that brought my fight to a standstill.
“You do not say when, worthless female. I say when. I am the Grand Duke, not you.”
The woman below started screaming, and with her, I heard Luc’s strained grunt as he fought what she was doing to him.
“That kitten is going to fuck him to his release so he remembers his place in this House,” his father sneered down at me. “And when she is finished, the ritual will come to an end. Unless you’d like to challenge me again. In which case, I’ll let each kitten in that room fuck him into delirium, as many times as she wants.” His cold, lifeless eyes narrowed to black dots of nothing. “What will it be, little wife? His fate is in your hands.”
Pure hatred whipped through me. But not even that hate was enough to make me defy this man. He was too powerful. And I... I just wanted this to be over.
The words felt like ashes in my mouth, but somehow I managed to say, “Just end it. No more.”
“Watch her finish him so you remember your place as well,” he said in that malevolent voice.
My stomach pitched, but I knew not to defy him any longer. Swallowing back the bile, I turned back to the ritual below, only the best I could manage to do was stare at the red carpet beneath the stone altar as my vision wavered and sounds echoed in the room.
“Believe in us no matter what happens.”
Luc’s words from only hours ago, when he’d called to tell me they weren’t letting him come home to me just yet, echoed in my head, sending a hot rush of tears right back to my eyes, blurring my vision all over again.
“I love you. I will always love only you. Promise me you won’t forget that.”
He’d known. My breath caught on a sob as I tried not to look at what was happening on that altar. He’d known what they were going to do to him, and he’d been desperate to make sure I knew how much he loved me.
Tears rushed down my face. None of this changed how I felt. I would always believe in us.
“I won’t forget,” I whispered, even though I knew he couldn’t hear me. “And I love you too. Always.”
Silence fell over the room. The woman sighed, and through blurry vision, I realized she was climbing off him, moving back to the edge of the inner circle where all the other females were now standing, waiting their turns.
I lifted my gaze to Luc, lying still on the rock slab, his face still tipped as far away from me as possible, his naked body glistening with sweat. That thick dark hair I loved to sift my fingers through was damp and clinging to his beautiful face. He wasn’t moving, was no longer struggling against the chains holding him down. But his quick and shallow breaths, the way the muscles in his neck twitched told me he was still in agony, fighting not to let anyone see.
Things happened so fast, I barely had time to process. One second, Luc was lying on that slab. The next, several hooded black figures in those hideous masks were unchaining him, hauling him off the altar, and dragging his limp and naked body toward me.
My pulse shot up. Two long chains dropped from the ceiling not more than twenty feet in front of me. The hooded figures attached Luc’s arms to the chains, and he was jerked upright, the chiseled muscles in his shoulders and arms flexing beneath his tan skin, his feet barely touching the ground.
“What’s happening?” The air caught in my throat. “What are they doing to him now?”
Luc didn’t look up at me. He hung his head and shook. Behind him, a figure draped in red, wearing a gold mask, stepped out of the shadows.
Horror seized my chest. I turned wide eyes toward Luc’s father. “You said it was over. What are they doing?”
“The cleansing ritual is over,” Luc’s father said in a cold voice, never once looking at me. “This has nothing to with your marriage. This is his punishment for defying his House.”
He nodded down toward the figure in red. The man pulled a large leather whip with multiple tails tipped with barbed ends from his cape and flung it outward with a crack.
“No.” Holy God. It looked like some kind of medieval torture weapon. A scourge, I realized, struggling harder than I ever had, understanding dawning. “You can’t do this!”
“Thirteen lashes,” Luc’s father called out loudly beside me. “One lash administered by each of the thirteen Knights, starting with the Grande Cavaliere. Begin.”
Chants filled the room. Twelve more hooded figures moved forward. The rest formed a semicircle around Luc. The figure in red—the Grande Cavaliere who was the leader of the Knights and the head advisor to Luc’s father, the Grand Duke of House Salvatici—drew his arm back and then forward, and a crack that sounded like cannon fire exploded through the air.
“No!” I screamed.
Luc’s whole body jerked. The snap of the flogger striking his bare flesh was drowned out only by Luc’s grunt as he tried to hold back a scream.
“You made an agreement with us,” Luc’s father said in that stone-cold voice as the Grande Cavaliere handed the weapon to a figure in black and stepped away. “You are now bound to that agreement.”