Shade's Embrace: A Dark Alien Romance by Olivia Riley

Author:Olivia Riley [Riley, Olivia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-02-19T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

MADDIE

Each raindrop felt like shards of ice cascading down her body. Her skin grew numb, her bones frozen. Her arms and shoulders ached with the tension. She had tried a couple of times to pull herself up and attempt to take hold of the rope with her legs but found it slippery and so cold it hurt to touch. Each time she tried she’d hear laughter from the others. They’d hiss and jeer at her and talk about her like she was hardly there. A few times one of them would come to pull her leg and lift her at an angle, letting her go to swing like a pendulum.

Valince didn’t laugh as much though he sat close by watching her. Despite what he’d done, he looked like he’d lost the amusement in it. He looked dissatisfied. As if he expected her to break quicker. She was glad that she hadn’t. A few times she caught herself losing consciousness but she shook herself out of it each time, forcing herself to stay awake. Because if she fell asleep, she worried about where she would wake up next.

Eventually, food was brought and her mouth watered at the smell. At that point, she was nothing more than an ornament in the background, something nice to look at while they ate.

She was never going to give in to him, she decided. No matter how he hurt her or humiliated her. She’d fight him at every turn. He could keep her hung up for all her days and she refused to give him an inch.

She would have said the same for Shade if he had chosen to imprison her instead of letting her work for him. Funny how, out of everyone she’d encountered so far in this hellish world, he had shown her a sliver of mercy. Too bad she believed everything Valince had said. Shade might have given her that one chance, but what was a human like her worth to him? Nothing.

That thought hit her harder than she cared to admit. Dread and hopelessness that had been knocking on the door to her heart now started seeping through, creeping in. Strangely, she only felt numb, angered by it. Though fresh tears threatened to fall, she knew they’d do her no good. Flight hadn’t worked for her, and neither had begging. There was only one way now.

She caught one of the aliens—a nilgani—saying something about human flesh and its taste. “It's best if rare, I heard. And cut thinly then steeped in blood.”

“Why not have a taste Valince and see for yourself?”

Valince said something she didn’t hear. She saw the nilgani get up to walk toward her, a glass in one hand and a knife in the other. She pretended to not see him, to be unconscious. When he trudged through the water and stood before her, she could see his face was at the perfect height. Before he could set his knife on her, she kicked out her legs as fast

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