Free The Scarred Prince (The Wolf's Pet Book One) by Aubrey Rose Page B

since I’d gotten the idea, I thought about what the decision would mean for me. It was silly, I suppose, but I hadn’t thought about myself at all. I’d only been thinking about the pack, and how I could save them from being killed. How I could save us from war. I hadn’t thought about what would happen to me if I gave myself over to the Scarred Prince.
    Fear began to creep back into my chest. I pushed it away.
    “What is he like?” I asked, keeping my voice bolder than I felt.
    “The Scarred Prince?”
    “Yes. Is it true what they say about him?” Curiosity filled my mind.
    “That depends. What do they say?”
    “That he has more scars than skin.”
    “Every alpha has scars,” Alekk said, grinning. “That’s how they get to be the alpha.”
    “Tell me more. Tell me what he’s like.”
    “I’ll tell you. But untie my hands first.”
    I frowned, looking down at the floor.
    “I can’t let you escape.”
    “I won’t. I’ll stay here. But you said that you would ease the pain in my arms if I answered your questions. And I’ve answered your questions.”
    I gulped. I had promised. I took the wolfbone blade from my belt and went around the pole. His wrists were scabbed over with blood at the ropeline. I felt so bad for him—he’d been sitting there all night like this. It was abuse, if not torture, and I hated that the guards had done nothing to help him. He groaned when I pulled the rope away from the pole to have a better angle.
    “Sorry,” I whispered. “I’ll be done soon.”
    “Please,” he said. “It hurts.”
    I cut through the knot, careful not to cut his skin when I got close to the end.
    “There,” I said. “Just a bit more—”
    The ropes snapped, and in a whirl he had spun around the pole. I felt rather than saw his kick to my wrist as I brought the wolf bone blade up. The knife fell, and I moved in slow motion. It clattered to the floor, and Alekk kicked it behind a shelf on the opposite side of the room. Before I even had a chance to raise my arm, he had grabbed me by the neck and shoved me back against the pole. I tried to scream, but his fingers only gripped my throat tighter and the scream was cut off into a gasp instead.
    It was like an explosion of light in my mind. As his hand touched my throat, I felt all of my nerves seize up. I couldn’t have fought back now, not even if I had wanted to. My entire mind was caught in a whirlwind of sensation, and as I clutched at his arms helplessly, the sensation only heightened. I saw bursts of colors in the air, and the sound in my ears was a high-pitched cacophony of voices that I did not recognize. And the scent—
    I couldn’t understand it, but I didn’t smell my own scent anymore. My scent was always background noise, like the taste of your own tongue. But now, it had disappeared. Instead, my nostrils filled with a different scent, something darker, with a sweetness under it. Like burning embers after you throw a green branch onto them.
    Was he choking me to death? Was that what this was? I beat at his arms with my hands, but I might as well have been fighting a tree trunk for all the good it did. He was stronger than anything I could have imagined. He wasn’t weak at all. He was—
    And then I met Alekk’s eyes, and there was a recognition in them that I didn’t understand. He leaned closer to me and licked my neck. The sensation made my vision blur, every muscle in my body shivering, twitching. If he hadn’t been holding me up by the neck, I would have fainted, I was sure of it.
    “Brave girl,” he said. One hand stayed at my throat. The other moved down, and I shuddered as he caressed me roughly. My body was burning hot and cold, and where he touched me, I could feel his fingers possess me as though I was his. Oh, the agony of his touch!
    “You want to be the prince’s bitch?” he asked. His voice was rougher, now, and his fingers touched me like he already had me in bed. I would have screamed but my air was cut off