Immortals After Dark 01 - The Warlord Wants Forever

about the turned demons?”

    “I don’t know. I will ask her when I return.” He wondered as well. Had she known? No, she’d been teaching him everything she knew—teaching him constantly.

    Why would she do that if she only planned to leave him?

    When he cringed, he realized Kristoff was still studying him.

    “Something to add?”

    He owed Kristoff his life and the life of his brothers. Three brothers and for Myst herself, he owed his king. He would withhold information on Myst’s kind but relate the rest. “I’ve learned a good deal about the Lore from her and want to discuss it with you, but I left my wife feeling poorly. I’d like to get back to her.”

    “By all means,” Kristoff said, his face unreadable. “But tomorrow we’ll talk of this.”

    Wroth nodded, then traced back to Myst, frowning as a hazy idea surfaced in the turmoil of his mind. Had his brother’s heart been beating earlier? But before he could contemplate this further, Wroth’s attention was distracted by Myst’s sleeping form. He gazed down at her, chest aching as usual. Sometimes he damned his beating heart because of the pain that seemed to follow it.

    Murdoch was right. She couldn’t change what she was, and he’d wronged her today. If only he could think more clearly where she was concerned instead of reacting viscerally. Primitively. Before, he’d never understood when men talked of madness and love in the same breath. Now he understood.

    He only hoped that when he asked her to forgive him his weakness, she could.

    After undressing, he climbed into bed with her. He pulled her close to him, running his hand down her arm, burying his face in her hair and smelling her soft, sweet scent. Finally at dawn, he passed out with exhaustion. When he dreamed, he opened his mind to her memories, to what had become his nightmares. They superseded all his other visions of battle and famine because these hurt him the most. See her in a sordid light. Punish yourself.

    See them all.

Chapter Eleven
    T he dream of the Roman appeared first. Wroth impatiently waited through the usual scene, seeking to see more. Did he truly want to? Could he ever turn back from this?

    Too late, it was done. He knew that he’d unlocked the floodgates and that these dreams were going to play out, each spinning to their gruesome, perverted endings.

    Myst slowly lifted her skirt up. Yet then Wroth felt something new—chills crawling up her spine as she peered down at the Roman with his wet lips and furious stroking.

    She was ashamed at her disgust and closed her mind off it. She was the bait. She’d be whatever it took to free her sister.

    “I’ll possess Myst the Coveted…”

    No one possesses me but in their fantasies. I’ll kill you as easily as kiss you…. The Roman sought to make her his plaything just as he had Daniela for these past six months.

    Suddenly Myst glanced up and Wroth saw through her eyes. Lucia had Daniela in her covered arms, the girl’s body limp and burned over most of her icy skin. Daniela had been tortured, Myst realized, by this animal at her feet, by his very touch. The familiar rage erupted within her. Control it…. Just a moment longer…. “And I’ll be yours, only yours,” she somehow purred.

    When Lucia signaled, Myst nodded, extracting her foot, his lips producing a loud sucking sound that made her cringe. She tapped the man’s bulbous nose with her big toe. In a tone dripping with sexuality, she said, “You probably won’t live through what I’m about to do”—her voice had gone to a breathy whisper belying the words and confusing the man—“but if you survive, learn and tell others that you should never”—a tap with the toe—“ever”—tap—“harm a Valkyrie.”

    Then she punted him across the room—

    Another scene began—the one with the raiding party, the one he’d always dreaded seeing the most. The men were nearing; he could hear her feigning heavy breathing, a stumble. All a part of the game.

    One tackled her hard into the snow. The others pinned her arms. She was pretending fear, weakly struggling. While others cheered, a burly Viking knelt between her legs and told her, “I hope you live longer than the last ones did.”

    Lightning streaked behind the man’s head and the wind seemed to follow it—a few looked around uneasily with nervous laughter.

    “The last ones’ names were Angritte and her daughter Carin,” Myst informed him. Carin, so young, simple in the