Chained

Ariel is a rare creature, one that the right collector, or scientist, would pay handsomely for. She knows if she’s captured, she will be studied, experimented on, and trapped in a cage forever. So, she runs and hides, clinging onto her freedom desperately until it is pried from her hands.

Her fate now lies with the hunters who captured her. But there is an Alpha in their midst, a werewolf who wants to do more than admire her beauty from behind glass cages. He wants to break her chains, shatter her will, and utterly consume her.

Will she be able to handle the brutal strength of his passion, or will she be claimed by it?

~~~~~ Excerpt ~~~~~

“$4,000,000.”

She hears someone say, an unfamiliar voice, like the man has been waiting to make his bid. There’s silence from the crowd. The man’s voice demands attention, submission. There’s a vibration in the air, a danger of fight. No one speaks, unwilling outbid the Alpha.

“The bid is at $4,000,000. Going once!” Silence in the room. “Going twice!” The auctioneer pauses, no doubt looking around hopefully to see if anyone is willing to buy her for higher. She wonders how much she should be worth. There is a note of disappointment in his voice when he announces, “Sold to Mr. Damien!”

She lets out her breath from where she’s been holding it. Mr. Damien sounds like a kind, safe man. Not a scientist, not an academic. Perhaps she’ll come out of this alive yet.

She is reeling from the shock of being sold for such a high price when her collar is suddenly being held and she’s being dragged back behind the stage. She hears someone whimpering and a man breathing hard, delivering blow after blow.

“Four million.” She recognizes his voice as the man in the dungeon and realizes he’s beating up the man who struck her face from his pleas. “She could’ve gotten three times that if you didn’t ruin her face!”

“Alpha Aiden, I’m sorry! Please!” She hears the man whimper and cough when he is hit again. The man chokes on his own spit and Ariel hears Alpha Aiden’s shoes hitting the man’s body.

“Take off her mask,” he says.

Light blinds her the moment the mask is wrenched off. He looks vastly displeased. She tries not to shrink back in fear. She sees the man who scratched her face and is sickened by the sight of the man on the floor. He’s wearing a collar like her own, one that stops him from shifting and healing.

“Still so beautiful, even with the scar,” he says. She fidgets warily and tries to turn away. “Don’t,” he says firmly, taking hold of her collar and gripping it tightly. “I would’ve taken you for myself.”

She briefly catches his eyes before blushing and abruptly turning her gaze elsewhere. She feels vulnerable with him, dazzled and overpowered by his mere presence. Perhaps it is going to be this way with all the Alphas she meets, but she suspects Alpha Aiden commands power.

“Alas, Damien stated his claim for you even before the hunt started,” he says with mild distaste. “I’d take this off, so you can heal, but you’d just run off the second I do, wouldn’t you?” he says.

The only noise she offers up is a grunt of pain when he presses his fingers into the scratch marks on her cheek. He squeezes his fingers, making her pucker her lips.

“How ‘bout a kiss before you go, hmm?” He doesn’t wait for her to answer, just pulls her face to his and press a wet kiss on her lips. His hand clutches her throat, pulling her forward and she quivers, her lips parting in stunned shock. He does not try to taste her and she finds the thought painful. She arches into him, trying to deepen the kiss. His lips curve upwards in satisfaction. He is the one to break the kiss.

It takes a moment for her to be herself again, for the fog of her desire to lift. When it does, heat rushes to her cheeks. She reels back, shock and humiliation on her face. “You disgust me.”

He laughs. “I disgust you? Wait till you meet the man who bought you.”

He pushes the mask back on her face.