When I came to, ropes bit into my wrists, my body hanging between pain and numbness. My blindfold stank of iron and dirt, and the air pulsed with a rank mix of sweat and musk—wolf musk.
Claws tore through my skin. Again. Again. Again.
Each strike burned like fire. Ninety-nine lashes—each one peeling away more than flesh. It stripped my pride, my power, my wolf.
“You shouldn’t have punished her,” a gravelly voice said. “She’s precious. You angered the wrong man.”
“Wh—who are you…” My throat bled with every word.
He didn’t answer. Just pulled out his phone.
“She’s done,” he muttered.
And then came the voice from the other end of the line—low, familiar, steady. [Leave her there.]
Even through static and pain, I knew it. Kael.
My wolf knight. The man sworn to protect me.
He’d ordered this.
By the time they dumped me on the roadside, I was barely conscious, skin flayed and blood slicking the asphalt beneath me. But I crawled. Half-shifted. Flagged down a cab. The driver screamed when he saw me—half-wolf, half-woman—but I growled, “Drive. Hospital.”
The emergency ward reeked of antiseptic and fear. I lay on a gurney, staring at the flickering ceiling lights, listening to the nurses whisper.