Scarlett’s POVMy shoulder throbbed. My chest pulsed. Oh, screw it – all of me hurt. My body, my soul. Even my thoughts were tinged red with pain. What did a little bit of death matter when I felt like that?I waited for the blow to come. I waited – and I kept waiting. I opened one eye, peering up at Naomi. She in turn was looking at Ryker, her wolfish face somehow managing to look confused. I couldn’t place why, exactly, and I didn’t spare the brain power to try to work it out. I scrambled backwards, no longer caring about whatever pride I’d stupidly thought I’d had for less than half a second. “Not so fast,” said Ryker. His hand snapped out, pinning me to the wall.“What?” I squirmed. “You said it yourself. I’m just here for your amusement.”“No.” Jaw clenching, his grip tightened. I cried out as his fingertips pressed against the hole in my chest. “I – no.” Ryker shook his head. “I don’t have to answer to you.”Well, I thought, consider my curiosity well and truly piqued. Naomi s

Scarlett’s POV For two days, I didn’t see Ryker. It was a blessing – and a curse, because it stalled my plan. Granted, my body needed time to heal between each provocation, but I ached to find out what he wanted me here for. I had to find out, because I had to get home. Imagining that was all that kept me going. On the third day, I managed to pick the lock on his bedroom door. I bit my lip to hold back an excited gasp, wary of anyone lurking in the hallway outside. The central bed, walk-in wardrobe, and view of the outback had been my only company, save for the Omegas charged with keeping me locked up and the Warrior Wolves charged with serving my punishment. I preferred the inanimate objects. Fingers trembling on the two bent bobby pins, I sat back on my heels and held my breath. Shifting slowly, so as not to make any noise, I crouched and slid my cheek to the door, pressing my ear to it. I was on Ryker’s floor, within which only he and his most faithful Omega servant resided. The

Scarlett’s POV“I know where he’s gone,” she said again, quieter, gentler. It only raised my proverbial hackles all the more.“I don’t care,” I lied. Of course I cared – but I couldn’t let her know that. I couldn’t let her even have that most basic of things to hold over my head. She’d not spoken to me in years, not like this, anyway, and I wasn’t about to let her change that. “Yes, you do,” she sighed. “Look at me, Scar.”I bit out a single syllable: “No.” Then, fuming both internally and externally, I stomped off further into the grove. I wouldn’t let her ruin this for me, too.“I made a mistake!” she called after me. I bit my lip and vowed to ignore her. I was in Shady Grove to feel closer to my parents, not to engage in some stupid bitch-war over every nasty thing my supposed best friend had done to me. “Scarlett, please.”I hung my head, torn between slamming around and shouting at her and the crippling, ever-present fear that kept me submissive. There was not one person in th

Scarlett’s POVI burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it; with the flood of fear that was crashing through my veins swelling to a crescendo, I came alight at the ridiculousness of such a statement. “Magic powers?” I bent double, hacking up a cough and a laugh in one. “Amber, don’t be so fucking stupid.”She flushed bright red – well, from what I could tell through my squinted, water-logged eyes, anyway. “I’m not being stupid!” she snapped, swiping at me. The laughter stopped. I gulped in a shaky breath, my chest constricting, my lungs too tight to let the air in. Stumbling back, I stared across at her with wide eyes. The dappled sunlight played across her taut face, shadowing her brow and making her appear all the more sinister. I shook my head, taking another, more measured, step backwards. “It’s second nature to you now, isn’t it?” I asked quietly.“What is?”“Hurting me. You don’t get your way, so you lash out.” I laughed again, humourlessly this time. Curling my fingers up again

Scarlett’s POVShady Grove was cast into darkness. In that moment, it felt to me as though it were Ryker himself creating that pocket of shadow; all the light in the world was sucked into him, drawn by like calling to like. I shuddered, writhing in his grip. It was tight enough to make me wheeze, but not tight enough to kill. Yet.“Nothing smart to say this time, hmm?” he purred, loosening his fingers one by one. It was a show of power, a reminder that I could do nothing to stop him. I knew that somewhere deep, somewhere intrinsic; my mind and body were a hacking, red-faced mess, my only conscious thought of getting oxygen into my straining lungs.“Do you understand your place yet, Omega?”I couldn’t even nod. I stared at him, bug-eyed, and waited for him to decide what to do with me next.“I’ve been away, you see. There have been… whispers, shall we say, for many years, about a beautiful and dangerous power lying in wait. Some of those whispers suggested that such a power had been ri