“Release me,” I said to the two guards who were hauling my ass through the freaking thousand hallways that made up the fae palace.
I pitied whoever had to keep it clean. The damn building was never-ending.
The good news—I was no longer naked.
A long, scratchy black dress dwarfed my frame and dragged well past my feet along the shiny floor. My vagina lips were no longer flapping in the breeze.
A minor victory, but an important one.
The bad news—I was being dragged by two massive guards.
They gripped my biceps tight enough to leave bruises, and my hands were cuffed in front of me.
Somehow, my life had gone even further downhill.
I’d woken up from unconsciousness to the guards manhandling me down the hall, and with the memory of Cobra knocking me out.
You know what hurts? When the controlling alpha who is high-key problematic, but also sexy as sin, knocks you out instead of railing you with his jeweled dick.
Talk about a blow to my feminine ego.
For the first time, I was hyperaware of the fact that I was a twenty-year-old virgin.
Most girls had sex by my age, but I hadn’t worried about my unpenetrated status. I’d been too busy trying to survive in the shifter realm. Now I felt like a complete loser.
My skin might be horribly scarred, but my lady bits worked just fine.
The fact that Cobra chose violence over sex with me had my heart twisting like an insecure twit.
“Would you have sex with me if I weren’t a prisoner?” I asked the fae guard.
He arched his eyebrows and gaped down at me.
I made a gagging noise when I realized where his mind had gone. “Ew, I meant hypothetically. Don’t make it weird.”
The guard said nothing, just tightened his grip on my arm and shoved me forward. His hand was unbearably tight, and I swallowed down a yelp of pain.
I guess that was a no.
Instead of whining because apparently nobody wanted to rail me, I focused on the important things.
I was handcuffed and unable to shift into my tiger form, and that the queen had probably told the guards to throw me off a cliff.
She was such a ho.
I used my most commanding tone and alpha-barked at the guards, “Release me now!”
In a shocking move, the guards ignored me.
At this point, I’d never successfully gotten anyone to do anything with my alpha bark, which was totally lame and not cool.
People always said it was important to assert what you wanted out of life and go after it. Well, I wanted to not be dragged down the hall like a carcass.
The palace was bustling with tall, gorgeous fae. Most of them didn’t even glance at me, like it was common for women to be dragged through their halls. Not a good sign.
Finally, after we walked down many opulent hallways, the guards stopped at a narrow staircase that led down into darkness.
I squinted my eyes at the creepy blackness and asserted what I wanted out of life. “It’s a no from me. I’m not going down there.”
The guard who was gripping my arm too tightly shoved me forward.
Of course, my head ungracefully bounced off the side of the wall, and I just barely caught myself from face-planting to my death.
I saved my body, but the throbbing in my head told me that my last functioning brain cell had bitten the dust.
When I got to the bottom of the rickety stairs, I turned to run back up.
The guards blocked my way and pushed me into what could only be described as a dungeon of despair.
Dim blue lanterns illuminated a large, dirty space, and I couldn’t look at the blue flames that resembled the queen’s power without suffering PTSD.
Unfortunately, the rest of the room was also highly triggering.
I would survive one day down here.
Max.
The dungeon was full of prisoners, rotting corpses, grime, despair, and rats.
Not cute rats either—big black things with red eyes and a thirst for vengeance. I could tell from the way they chittered at me.
I’d been around enough rats to know from the tone of their squeaks that they were cussing me out.
They were nothing like the small brown rats that had lived in Dick’s tavern with me. Those guys were small and cute.
These rats were the size of cats. Not small and not cute.
A rat lunged at me, and I screamed like a little girl.
Thankfully, it only took a small bite out of my ankle before swerving to run at a prisoner thrashing on the ground.
“Go squeak yourself!” I yelled at the rat as it scurried away.
Once again, my guards gaped at me. Their pointy fae ears twitched like they’d never heard a woman speak to a rat before.
Uncultured pussies.
Moans and grunts of pain distracted me, and I looked around the room.
Hundreds of prisoners were chained on the walls along the perimeter of the dungeon, and they moaned and sputtered as the guards led me deeper into the long, dark space.
Their bodies were mangled, and my heart clenched at their jaundiced eyes and bruised bodies.
The guards led me deep into the recess of the dungeon, back to the far wall, where there was still some space available for another person.
With a loud clack, they hooked the chain attached to my handcuffs onto a massive metal bar that ran along the perimeter of the room.
Everyone was chained to it.
I curled my legs up under my butt and tried to not touch the filth that coated everything.
Big black rats scurried around my feet, covered in gore and sludge from the prison floor.
I breathed and tried to pretend this was an adventure, like in an epic fantasy book about the half warriors, and not the single worst day of my entire life, and scary, and horrible and… I was panicking.
So I did what I did best.
I ignored my lack of mental health and relied on inappropriate humor and unhealthy coping mechanisms to survive.
I turned to the prisoner next to me.
“Wow, you look like you’re in great shape compared to the rest of these poor saps. How did you get down here? I started out as a weird captive sex lady, but I’ve been demoted to the dungeon. A part of me feels like I didn’t even get the chance to show off my bedroom skills, ya know?”
The massive prisoner turned his head and blinked startling gray eyes.
“Why is there a bruise on your cheek?” Jax’s voice was guttural, and a low growl vibrated through his massive chest.
His growl was so loud you could almost hear it over the prisoners shrieking all around us.
Almost being the key word.
I shrugged casually as I thought about the guard throwing me into the wall. “Guard man did it. I think he doesn’t like me.”
Jax’s nostrils flared, and he asked, “Which one?”
Both my guards were standing a few feet away. They were kicking a prisoner, who was moaning in pain.
I pointed at the asshole who had gripped my arm too tight.
Before I could tell Jax that it didn’t matter, because I was so glad he was alive—and that I needed a hug because I was mentally crumbling—his massive leg lashed out.
Jax’s hands were also cuffed in front of his body, and his chains only gave him a foot or two of room.
A normal man wouldn’t have been able to move far.
But Jax was about seven feet tall and covered in muscles.
He was the opposite of normal.
Jax lunged out with his massive legs and swept the guard’s feet out from beneath him.
With insane strength, he hooked his heels around the fallen guard and dragged him toward us.
Then Jax slammed his body weight down atop the guard and pummeled the fae’s skull with his elbow.
Blood sprayed, and I watched, openmouthed, in shock as the protective and kind Jax decimated the man’s existence.
The howling prisoners chanted and cheered like a pack of wild dogs.
A couple of guards watched what Jax was doing, but they didn’t move to help. They just backed away as the big man went psycho on the now very dead body.
Suddenly, I understood why people might be a little scared of Jax.
When he was done cracking the man’s cranium like a grape and giving me more PTSD, he kicked the mangled corpse away like it was trash.
“Who are you?” an emaciated man chained next to Jax asked in wonder.
“I’m Ja—”
“He’s called the Meat Grinder,” I said before Jax could finish.
A name had power, and if we were ever getting out of here, we needed to establish some.
I knew this because one year at school, everyone had called me Scrawny Bitch. In the shifter realm, school was free, but your parents or master paid for a meal plan.
Dick, my abusive master, had generously given no money. The school had fed me once every other day, which had not helped my already small stature.
As a result, shifters had whispered the name wherever I went. Still, I’d found it empowering to be infamous.
I was 99 percent sure the principles that applied to mean prepubescent shifter teens applied to bloodthirsty adult fae with insane powers.
The emaciated man next to Jax said, “Thank you, Meat Grinder. He’s been terrorizing us for years. He’s the worst guard. You don’t know what you’ve done for us.”
I choked on laughter at the name.
Jax nodded solemnly, but gave me a look that promised there would be hell to pay later.
Whatever, he’d eventually be grateful.
In other sad news, the shrieking in the dungeon escalated as the prisoners grew raucous with elation and flung poop at the guard’s dead body.
I closed my eyes and wished I were cuddled under my warm blankets with my little kitten curled up on my chest.
My stomach fell further. Too bad my kitten was a traitor who’d gotten me locked in this prison.
My head throbbed with tension because the kitten made me think of a certain tattooed man with horns who had also betrayed me.
I rocked back and forth with my eyes closed.
Jax alpha-barked loudly into the room, “No one touches her or they fucking pay. Understood?”
His dominance was so powerful I had a sudden urge not to touch myself, which made no sense.
“Meat Grinder, Meat Grinder, Meat Grinder!” all the prisoners chanted back, his name catching like wildfire.
The noise was unbearably loud, and I opened my eyes to find the prisoner next to me karate chopping the air and screaming nonsense.
Everyone was getting riled up.
Not the most relaxing atmosphere. I had regrets about the name.
The noise crescendoed around me, and so did my anxiety.
I shifted closer to Jax and whispered the awful secret that was choking me alive, “Cobra knocked me out instead of having sex with me in front of the entire fae realm.”
My rational brain knew that not being forced to have sex in front of people was a good thing.
My irrational virgin brain knew that my crush had just punched me in the face rather than have sex with me.
I was good enough for a little closet play, but not good enough to go all the way with.
“They were going to force you both to have sex?” Jax asked quietly.
The loud rumble that rattled through his chest and shook the brick walls of the prison betrayed his emotions.
Suddenly, like a wild animal, he roared.
The dungeon went dead silent.
You didn’t mess with an angry alpha; it was instinctual.
Jax’s gray eyes glowed like a lightning storm was ripping through his skull, and he slammed his cuffed fists into the sternum of the dead guard.
He turned to me, and the harsh glow in his eyes dimmed as he inspected my huddled frame.
I was pressed against the wall, arms wrapped around my knees, as I struggled to avoid the guard’s blood splatter while also trying to not touch any of the filth that covered the floor.
As I looked around, I realized I was the only woman in the prison. Not the female empowerment movement I wanted to be a part of.
The silence broke as everyone started to shriek again.
“Are you okay?” Jax whispered and scooted closer.
“Um, no,” I whispered, and coughed at the stench of rotting flesh and feces. Someone needed to light a candle ASAP.
“Come here,” Jax growled as he lifted his large, cuffed arms above his head and motioned for me to lean against his wide chest.
I ignored the gore covering his fists and immediately snuggled against him so his warm heat completely enveloped me.
This was the second time I’d cuddled against Jax, and it was as comforting as I remembered.
His muscles were large and cushy, and his body temperature burned like a furnace.
Jax’s golden jewels tinkled as he adjusted me against him.
In the howling den of violence that was the fae prison, we held each other in comfortable silence.
He was a shelter in the middle of a blizzard.
“The whole realm saw my scars,” I whispered quietly.
Jax grew stiff beneath me, and a low rumble vibrated against my back. The resonance was soothing.
“I’m so sorry, little alpha. No one should see your skin unless you want them to.” He rubbed his cheek across my head and offered me comfort.
I said quietly, “Cobra has seen them, and I-I’m worried he’s going to think less of me or pity me. Also, I don’t know if he’s okay. I got separated from him. I’m so sorry, Jax.”
Jax squeezed his biceps around me comfortingly. “Cobra can take care of himself. He’s a century old and a master warrior. We have to trust him and his skills.”
I nodded and tried to reassure myself that the sparkly man would be okay.
Also, damn, I hadn’t known he was a century old. Apparently, a grandpa had gone down on me, and I didn’t know how to feel about it.
Jax growled softly, “Little alpha, Cobra will not think less of you or pity you, even if he wants to. Since day one, he has tried to hate you, but no matter how hard he tries, he can’t.”
I buried my face against his chest and scolded myself for acting like a ninny about my scars. We had bigger things to deal with.
My stomach pinched, and I prayed to the moon goddess to look after Cobra. The sun god knew she wasn’t bothering to look after me.
There was a commotion among prisoners as new guards marched through the dungeon.
They dragged a man behind them. His face was mottled with wicked bruises, and his body was limp in their arms.
I gagged at the man’s beaten state. He looked awful.
Eight guards restrained him, and they held long batons in their hands. The batons glowed with the blue flames of the fae queen.
As they dragged the abused man across the room, he looked up.
Familiar emerald eyes stared at me.
It was Cobra.
