The Jackal (Black Dagger Brotherhood - Prison Camp 1)

The yearning for that fantasy was as strong as her love for the quaking male who was chained before her, stronger even than her mortal fear about the death that was surely coming.

“I wanted to see you two together.”

Nyx jerked around. Down on the floor of the Hive, standing in the center of the vast, empty cave, was the black-robed figure that had briefly removed her hood and looked, catastrophically, like Nyx’s long-lost sister.

The Command came forward, those billowing folds of black fabric ominous, like funeral draping about to fall on a casket. She stopped when she was five feet away from the dais, the hooding angling back as she looked up.

“Bring the basket.”

Nyx looked at Jack. The trembling was subsiding in him, the unhealthy flushing in his chest and throat and face fading—to reveal a palm print on his cheek as if he’d been slapped.

“No,” he mumbled. “Not her—”

“You gave up any chance to have an opinion about anything when you let her take your vein.” The Command shook her head. “And your reward for being a faithless fuck is that she gets to watch everything. Then I’m going to teach her about death—”

“No!” he yelled as he strained against the chains.

“Fuck you!” the Command hollered back. “You had everything here! I took care of you—you were treated with more goddamn deference than anybody except me. And you fucked it all up—you fucked yourself when you fucked her!”

The Command grabbed the folds of her robe and marched up onto the stage. “I fucking hate you!”

Nyx started to respond, but the Command went by her like she didn’t exist, getting up into Jack’s face, punching at his chest. “You fucking asshole!”

“I was never yours,” Jack said on a growl.

The Command ripped off her hood, that red hair glowing under the harsh lighting. “You were left to your own devices here, you were taken care of, you had everything—”

“I had nothing—”

“You had me!”

“I. Didn’t. Want. You! ” Jack screamed the last word, the muscles in his neck and shoulders bulging. “You drugged me and strapped me down and took what I didn’t want to give you. I didn’t fucking want you!”

The Command seemed stunned. “You lie.”

“When was the last time I got on that bed willingly? It’s been decades,” he spat.

Nyx felt the world spin on its axis again. As her brain jammed with the implications of it all, the Command, trembling with rage, hauled back with her open palm—

Nyx moved before she had a conscious thought to take action. Surging forward, she took her cuffed hands and raised them high, jacking them over the Command’s head and yanking back, catching the chain between the shackles right across the front of that throat.

Blind rage gave Nyx a strength she had never had before, and she dragged the Command up against her own body, taking control, owning the situation as she wheeled around and faced the guards.

In a loud, clear voice, she spoke over the choking sounds and the thrashing of the robes. “I will fucking kill her. I will snap her fucking neck right now if any of you move.”

As Jack saw Nyx jump forward, he would have yelled at her to stop, but there was no time. One moment, she was standing behind the Command, the next she had her handcuffs around the female’s throat and was hauling back as if her life depended on the Command’s losing hers.

Which was the truth of the situation they were all in.

His female was in a magnificent fury, her eyes glowing with retribution, her body strung like a bow as she strangled her prey. And when she ordered the guards, her voice was like something that had come from on high, from a deity of war. Meanwhile, the Command’s hands clawed at the constriction, her face flushing, her eyes bulging—

Jack’s awareness instantly bifurcated. Part of his brain stayed on the situation before him, his female ahvenging his honor like the warrior she was. The other part was looking at the two faces side by side, Nyx’s right behind the Command’s.

He refused to believe the conclusion he was coming to. But if one disregarded the difference in hair color . . . there was a shocking similarity between the shapes of their faces, the arches of their brows, the tilt of their eyes. They were even the same height, tall for females, and . . .

“No,” he whispered as Nyx continued to bark orders. “It cannot be.”

That was the last thing that came out of his mouth, the last conscious thought he had as everything went to senses and reaction rather than logic and reason: In a strange, slow-motion kind of dreamscape, he noticed from the corner of his eye that Kane was getting to his feet in a wobbly manner.

Kane looked at Jack. Then his eyes went to Nyx.