Free Passion Untamed by Pamela Palmer Page B

with anticipation. Crawling with evil.
    Paenther snarled. Hatred burned inside him as he spilled his seed.
    A roar filled the room, turning the air hot and wild until it singed his lungs and scorched his skin. Pain ripped through his body on a sudden tide of fire.
    A scream echoed through the walls from beyond, drawing Birik’s shout of triumph.
    Caught in the clutches of the pain, Paenther barely noticed when the chanting ended, and the men rushed from the room, leaving him alone with Skye. He stared up at her, at the face he’d once thought beautiful, now covered in blood, her eyes closed, her expression tight with pleasure…or pain. Hatred burned low in his gut as the sharp pain slowly died away except for a throbbing sting across his left eye.
    Skye rose, lifting off him unsteadily as she tried to stand, only to collapse by his feet where she lay on her back, gasping.
    He didn’t know how long they stayed like that, lying in the moonlight and dying embers, amidthe blood, their flesh rippling with the remnants of power.
    Neither spoke. There was nothing to say.
    Yet again, he wondered what Birik meant to do with the power they’d raised.
    Birik finally returned, lightwicks floating above him. He strode to Skye and lifted her into his arms.
    The bitch wrapped her arm around the Mage’s neck as he carried her from the room, leaving Paenther chained and alone. With little hope, he strained against his shackles, pouring everything into freeing himself. Useless. He remained trapped as completely as any caged beast.
    Outside the cavern room, a single bloodcurdling scream ripped at his eardrums, followed by triumphant shouts and cheers.
    Dread knotted deep inside his chest. Goddess help him. What evil had they unleashed?
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Chapter Six
    Paenther wasn’t sure when they’d enthralled and transferred him, but as the fog cleared from his head, he found himself standing upright outside a glass enclosure deep within the caverns.
    The clank of chains and the bite of cold shackles told him he was pinned fast to the wall behind him. Glancing down, he saw that he was wearing pants again. The leather pants he’d worn that disastrous afternoon he’d followed Skye into the woods. How long ago? He’d been out of it too much to know how long he’d been a prisoner.
    Last thing he remembered, he’d been covered with blood. The ritual. Memory slammed into him, the force of his fury stealing his breath. His mouth tightened, his teeth grinding.
    Goddess, but the witch had played him.
    His furious gaze scrutinized the glassed chamber twelve to fifteen feet below him, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. In one corner, paint…or blood…had been splattered everywhere, copious amounts of it. His gaze narrowed as he tried to correlate the lit, bloody chamber below with the dark one he’d been in earlier, and failed. No, they were definitely not the same room. The fine hairs rose on the back of his neck. So what had happened here? And why was he chained so he could see it?
    He sensed Vhyper even before the Feral rounded the corner to join him.
    “Release me, Vhype,” Paenther growled.
    “You have to see this, B.P. No one’s seen anything like it in millennia. Watch. The fun is about to begin.”
    On cue, four people stepped into sight in the room below, two men and two women, accompanied by a single Mage sentinel. Slowly, little by little, the people blinked and looked around groggily, as if coming out of enchantment.
    “Are they human?”
    “Yes. Watch.”
    The Mage left the room through a far door. Moments later, from an entrance below that Paenther couldn’t see, another figure entered the room. A male, he thought, judging by the breadth of the shoulders, clad in some kind of filmy dark cloak, his back to Paenther. The man’s hair was long and black and sparkled like diamonds. He didn’t walk, but floated upright,a foot off the ground. And his cloak…A chill slid down Paenther’s spine. Not a