“One day you will confess, and on that day, I will punish you so thoroughly you will know you have finally atoned.” I make the promise with a tender note in my voice. She will suffer, but that does not mean I cannot treat her well in the meantime.
“Mr Tusk, I didn’t. I couldn't. I’m not… assassins are smart, agile, and strong. I am a housewife who makes bad cheese sandwiches. Surely you must see I am not capable of these things.”
She does appear weak and limp of will, but I see the strength behind her gaze. I know that she is more than she appears to be. I change the subject because listening to her constant denials gets us nowhere.
“Rath needs to address this, but he won’t.”
“Why?”
“Because he secretly believes this is for the best. He has sympathy for the brat king, and his human shares social ties with Krush’s pregnant mate.”
“Brat king?”
“Krush was not ready to become king. It was forced upon him when Rath got his father killed.”
“This is a very complex situation,” she notes.
“Yes. It is. Made more complex by your scythkin masters. I need you to understand what has been destroyed, so you might comprehend the intensity and relentlessness of your punishment to come.”
She falls silent. “It might have been Mark.”
“What do you mean it might have been Mark?”
“He had some visitors at strange hours of the night. I wasn't allowed to get up to see them. He said it was for business purposes. And he was gone sometimes. A long time, sometimes. I thought he was cheating on me, but he could have been murdering women. I saw it in his eyes sometimes, the temptation to truly hurt me.”
“Mark.”
“Mark.”
“Mark.”
Repeating his name over and over with an increasing growl in our voices does not help anything.
"You must have known it was never me, Mr Tusk. Look at me. Look at what I am. I am nothing."
“That is not true," I growl. “You are everything.”
She looks up at me in surprise, her eyes widening. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean…” I do not precisely know what I mean. If I do, I do not want to admit that I mean I was entranced by her the moment I saw her, and that I slaughtered her idiot husband out of an immediate and undeniable need to protect her.
I cannot admit to myself, let alone anyone else, that I fell in love the very first moment I saw her, that her vulnerability drew me to her and demanded that I make her mine.
These are the traps other korabi have fallen into. Rath and Krush are both weakened by their human mates. I will not allow myself to lose control over myself and therefore over her.
“I mean you were an accessory to the crimes,” I growl. “And you must still be punished. Someone must pay.”
“I understand. I am Mark’s whipping girl.”
Margaret
He cups my chin, and he is gentle for a moment. I wonder if he has found some capacity for mercy, if he might admit to a softer feeling for me.
“Yes,” he says. "You are. You must bear the pain of the sins of those you loved, and those you hated.”
“But you know I am innocent.”
“I know no such thing. I can allow that it is possible your male partner may have been responsible for the assassination, and that you remained a helpless and downtrodden party to it—but you were still a party to it. You benefitted from the riches of his terrible crimes. You ate, drank, and slept in the proceeds of his bloody cruelty.”
“But I didn't know what he was doing…”
He growls. He does not like excuses. He sees something at the core of me, something beneath the fear and the timidity and everything else, which lies between me and most people.
“You,” he repeats, “are my whipping girl. You will be punished as and when I see fit, according to my mood and need. If you take no responsibility for the part you may have played in the atrocities of your life, then I will feel no need to justify my cruelty to you either.”
The gentleness is over. The monster is emerging, the creature of claws and cruelty who makes my sex throb with need. I do not fear him as he believes I should because there is no comparison between Tusk and Mark. When Mark was angry, my blood went cold, and my breath came short and tight. I felt as though I was floating above myself. When Tusk touches me, I inhabit myself completely. I feel my heart beating, my blood rushing. I feel that familiar tingling between my thighs and the anticipation of not just pain, or pleasure, but raw, rough connection.
“You give yourself to me so prettily," he growls, running his sharp teeth down the length of my exposed neck. He has my arms in each of his hands and I am trapped in his grasp, with no desire to escape. I feel myself melting into his heat and his anger which is not anger. I do not know what drives Tusk. He rages and he growls, he snarls and he shouts, but the hot core at the center of him remains hidden to me. Why is he so angry? I may never know.