Enthralled (The Enslaved Duet 1)

There was a ringing in my ears, but I couldn’t open my eyes to check if it was the orchestra still playing or the continued ricochet of my head impacting with the ground repeatedly. Something wet slid down my face, but I couldn’t figure out how to make my hand work to feel if it was blood or tears.

Crippling pain snapped through my abdomen like cracking plastic, so excruciating that I curled my bruised body in on itself trying to lessen its severity.

Suddenly, there was the smell of cedar and pine in my nose and gentle pressure on the side of my head as someone tried to speak to me through the encroaching darkness of my mind.

“Xan,” I thought I mumbled before I passed out. “Make sure you save our baby.”

When I woke up, someone was shouting.

The decibel slammed into my temples like stakes driven into the earth.

I tried to open my mouth to complain, but my voice died like a flailing butterfly in my throat.

And then the noise filtered through the fog of slumber and pain to truly penetrate.

It was Xan, and he was screaming at someone.

“Who the fuck put you up to it?”

With enormous effort, I peeled my eyes open and squinted through the bright light that assailed my vision even in the dark room.

Alexander was holding the middle-aged doctor, Farley, by the neck against the wall of our bedroom in the Mayfair house.

I watched as he slammed him into the wall again and then again, his face screwed up with vehement fury.

“I asked you a question,” he roared, rearing back with one fist raised so that he could hammer it into the wall beside Farley’s head.

Dry wall and dust exploded around Alexander’s fist, and he punched it into the wall and then pull it back out.

“The next blow is to your face. Now, tell me who paid you not to give her birth control?” Alexander repeated at a lower register, but his voice quaked with suppressed rage. “If you don’t tell me now, I will drag you to Pearl Hall, string you up in the trees at the edge of the forest, and skin you alive like a felled deer.”

“I, it’s,” Farley stammered, so wild-eyed his lids were peeled back into the crease of his eye sockets. “I’m sorry, but he’s scarier than you are when it comes down to it.”

An animal sound rumbled through Alexander’s throat as he carted the man over to the door, wrenched it open, and threw him out into the hall.

Instantly, Riddick appeared, his redhead complexion gone scarlet with anger.

“He talks or he dies,” Alexander ordered, before shutting the door with a clang and then leaning back against it.

He closed his eyes and rubbed a hand over his tired face. For the first time since I’d met him, he looked every minute of his thirty-five years.

“Xan?” I croaked once, the word falling like dead weight to the blankets tucked under my chin. “Alexander?”

Immediately, his eyes snapped open and locked with mine.

They were filled like crystal balls with a swirling torment on emotions I wasn’t psychic enough to decipher.

I patted the bed weakly, too tired to speak to him from so far away.

He was at my side in a heartbeat, carefully peeling back the heavy blankets so that he could slide underneath and gently roll into my side so that he was leaning over me. His fingers went to my hair, pulling and twisting at a strand to soothe himself more than me.

He loved my hair and drew solace from it even more than I did.

“What a horrible end to your birthday,” I ventured, letting my eyes drift shut for a moment as I absorbed the warmth and comfort of his body.

“Don’t joke, Cosima.” I opened my eyes at his use of my name and saw the sobriety of his features. “Did you know you were pregnant?”

I squeezed my eyes shut as a hollow remnant of pain panged through the empty walls of my womb.

“Not anymore,” I whispered.

“No,” he agreed, implacably. “Did you know?”

“I guessed. The past few days, I’d been overly emotional and nauseated.”

I felt his fingers graze my neck, and I realized that I was still wearing the pearl and ruby collar. “Look at me, bella.”

When my eyes opened, they were filled with the tears I didn’t want him to see. One fell off the cliff of my lower lid and burned a path down my cheek. Alexander stopped it with one knuckle and brought the salty drop to his lips.

“I am sorry this happened to you,” he said, filled with gravitas that pressed like a weight against my sore heart.

His anguish made mine all the more acute.

“I feel as though I’m always saying that,” he admitted as he twirled my hair.

“You are,” I agreed without malice.

I’d been through so much because of him.