A room stretches around me--vast, regal, and wrong. The walls seem to breathe, dark shadows creeping like veins across them and a thousand candles gutter with flame.
There, at the center of the boudoir is a bed of dark silk spilling over the sides.
I feel his gaze before I see him. Immense. Ancient. Sexual.
Something about being here makes me want to run my fingers along my skin, into my hair and arch my back. My fingers twitch with an irresistible urge to reach for my clothes and rip them to shreds. Climb into that bed and let the otherworldly being sitting on it wrap those chains around me and pull my legs apart.
Something...everything is wrong with this place.
The figure on the bed’s edge sits up slowly, his movements graceful as liquid. His silver hair spills over his naked chest, skin made of fire and stone bare down to his torso. Lines of dark tattoos move down his arms like sorcery. His eyes glow with such hunger, my stomach twists with fear.
It’s him. Again. He’s found my dreams and slipped into it. The Dark King.
"Nice of you to visit, little wolf," he croons. And then, he holds an arm out to me. "Come to me. I smell the lust in you. Let me sate it."
Again, like a puppet with strings, my legs begin taking steps towards him that I have no control over.
"No!" I cry. "No!"
Surprisingly, the thrall snaps free and I stagger back, slamming into a dresser.
The monster cocks his head in the manner that a predator does as it sizes up his prey. For a long time, he remains unmoving.
And suddenly, he is no longer across the room. He is behind me.
I run forward but he catches me before I ever really take one step. Without even touching me. I feel phantom hands keeping me rooted on the spot, my legs tied together with invisible chain. "What are you doing to me? What do you want from me?" I whisper.
Cold breath ghosted over my ear, his presence so vast it filled every corner of the chamber. "You reek of one touched of the gods. Surely, you must know we own unspeakable abilities. This is one of amongst many."
His fingers catch strands of my hair between fingers. "As to what I want from you... It is you who seeks me, not the other way around. So, tell me," his tongue flicks out and licks my pounding pulse with a grunt of... of approval? "What do you want from me, little wolf? Why do you plague my nights and trample upon my personal time? Does the concept of dying every night entice you so?"
A hand brushes my throat, and my body betrayed me with a sob. "Why are you killing us?"
That hand pauses. "Us?"
"My people."
Another blink and he is standing before me, those devilish eyes locked harshly on mine. I feel tears of blood well up in my eyes again. It hurts--physically hurts--to look him in the eye, but I cannot tear my gaze away.
"My ancestors bore the same misery. Trusting your conniving kind. Ending up with a spear or two in our spines." He flicks his hand in a mock-gesture of dismissal. "The same story, always. Dead mate. Dead children. We all bear tragedy. I am no different."
His words lilt and it takes a moment to grasp the full meaning of his words. "You lost your... mate. And children."


"I am different." His lips curl into a smile too beautiful to belong to something so monstrous. "I am worse than anything your mind can fathom. And I savor it. The shrieks, the begging, the terror, the silence that comes with death."

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABEL
Comments
The readers' comments on the novel: The Alpha King Marked Me. I Still Haven't Told Him I'm A Girl