KORO’S POV I woke with a gasp, my body heaving in pain as my eyes snapped open.
For a second, the instinct of my shifter wolf took over.
I tried to get up, and my first conscious thought was that I was drowning in the sun, and I stopped moving for a moment.
My brain woke up and found myself covered in a heavy fur and noticed that the air around me was so hot that it made my skin itch like I was being pricked by a thousand needles.
“Don’t struggle, little wolf.
You’ll only spike your heart rate, and I’m quite enjoying the current stability that you have offered me since you set foot in my palace”.
The voice rose from the left, and I turned my head, my neck clicking, and I came face to face with Rujin Marks, and I could feel the invisible tether humming in my bones.
He was stripped to a silk shirt, unbuttoned at the chest, watching me with the predatory patience of a damn monster.
“Where am I?” I rasped in response.
“My private quarters,” Rujin responded, tilting a glass of amber liquid.
“The only place in Kryos where the temperature works for both of us, because anywhere else, we would be dead.” I stared at my hands that had a pair of sleek cuffs, and my brows furrowed by the fact that they glowed with a faint, pulsing orange light, and when I listened in, pushed my wolf senses and realized that they synced perfectly with the rhythm of Rujin’s heart.
“What did you do to me?” I hissed, sitting up in anger, and the movement made my head spin for a second.
My wolf growled, and my vampire beast was too silent, making me question what was going on.
“I saved you,” Rujin said, his eyes landing on the pulse in my neck.
“When they captured you, someone else had already seen what you can do.
Do you know who?
The Syndicate.
They were going to melt you down, Koro.
A Varg-Kyrie’s blood is valuable as a cooling body, and I decided I would rather have the whole of you and make you my asset.” “I am no one’s cooling body,” I snarled, my upper lip curling to reveal elongated canines.
“Neither am I, your asset.” “Actually,” Rujin spoke up as he stood up and moved closer to the exact nine-foot mark and then reached into the pocket of his slacks and pulled out a translucent data pad.
He flicked his finger, and a holographic document projected into the air between us.
“According to the High Spire Charter, you are exactly that.
Item 402: Unregistered Hybrid beast, and you have no legal personhood.
Koro.
You are classified as dangerous, and since I paid the recovery fee to the Iron-Paw Pack, I own you.” “You lie,” I breathed as I heard my name for the first time since I set foot in his damn hold.
“Do I?” Rujin’s smile was toxic, a beautiful, cruel thing.
“They needed heat credits for the winter, Koro.
Your Alpha Vex, was it?
She is quite the negotiator, and she sold your unique services to ensure her pack didn’t freeze into statues by morning.
You should be proud; you’re a hero of the slums and the one who has given life to them, or else they would have ended up dead.
The wolf in me was screaming for blood.
I wanted to feel his throat tear beneath my teeth, and I only got three feet before the world exploded and a searing, white-hot pain buckled my knees, and I fell to the floor.
“Ah,” Rujin murmured sarcastically.
“I forgot to mention the safety protocol.
The Thermal Lock is tuned to my intent.
If you move toward me with aggression, the tether stops absorbing.
You essentially become heat lava, and I would advise that you adapt to being well behaved and leave the brutish behaviour as a thing of the past.
I looked up at him through blurred vision, my fingers clawing at the obsidian floor.
“Kill…
me…
then.” Rujin walked over and knelt, ignoring the heat rolling off me that would have killed a normal man and caught my jaw in his hand, his thumb bruising my skin.
“Why would I kill the only thing that is keeping me alive?
You think this is a cage, Koro?
It’s an ecosystem.
You keep me from burning, and I keep you from the white death.
You will eat at my table, sleep at the foot of my bed, and when I burn too hot, you will take my fire until you’re screaming for the cold again.” His eyes were blazing as he murmured through gritted teeth and leaned in closer, his scent expensive tobacco and ozone suffocating me.
“Get away from me, you monster” I growled at him.
“You’re not a prisoner,” Rujin crooned, his voice a honeyed poison.
“A prisoner has a hope of release or a day when he will be free.
You are a part of my body now, my lungs, my heart-sink, and mostly my property.” He let go of my jaw, and the pain vanished instantly, replaced by that sickening relief as the excess heat drained back into the tether, making me hate the relief more than the pain as it made me feel like a damn addict.
“I will find a way to kill you,” I seethed at him.
“A predator without teeth is a boring pet.
Now, get up and get cleaned up.
The Syndicate Board is arriving in an hour to inspect their investment, and please try not to look like you’re enjoying the warmth.” Rujin laughed.
I stayed on the floor, my cheek pressed against the cold stone, watching the orange glow of the cuffs pulse on my wrists, planning and plotting.
Damn, ten feet.
I was a dog on a ten-foot leash made of fire by a madman who thought that he could control me for life.
Rujin Marks had forgotten one thing about winter pack wolves: we did not just endure the storm; we waited for it to break.