GRUNTS, GROANS AND THE CLANG of metal against metal roused Nola from her troubled sleep. She wanted to rise, to see what was happening, but could not force her body into action. Her back was a mass of agony, the skin flayed completely. The rest of her, well, it had not fared much better during her battle with Amelia. Nola had won, her determination stronger than any weapon, but she had not emerged unscathed. There were deep sword slices all down her arms, stomach and legs.

She lay on her bed, her stomach pressed into soft blankets. Alone, always alone. No one was allowed to help her. Not in any way. Amazons healed as slowly as humans, so she knew she would suffer like this for many weeks to come.

Outside, a scream echoed. Her muscles were heavy as stones, and she didn’t have the strength to drag herself upright. Or gather food. Not that she even had the strength to eat. She wanted to help her sisters, though. Despite what had been done to her, she loved them.

They had welcomed her into their fold when she’d had nowhere else to go. They had despised her mother for what the woman had done to her.

“You will die for this, vampires!” someone shouted.

“Not by your hand,” she heard a male voice say. The vampire king? That had sounded like his rough, cocky timbre.

Despite her pain, Nola grinned. Relaxed.

Zane was here.

For hours, the battle continued to rage. Nola didn’t want her sisters injured, but neither did she want Zane to lose, and waiting proved difficult. She chewed at her cheeks, dug her nails into her palms and broke into a sweat, which caused her back to burn as if it had been set on fire as well as flayed.

Finally, the tent flap rose and light flooded inside. And then he was there, standing in front of her. Her vampire. Zane. Her heart knocked against her ribs.

“Knew you’d come,” she said, her voice barely audible. She hadn’t screamed during her whipping, hadn’t made a sound, but holding her cries inside had scraped her throat raw.

“Nola…sweet…” He approached her slowly, as if she were a trapped animal. “What did they do to you?” There was horror in his tone. He crouched beside her, reached out and smoothed her hair from her damp forehead. Then he froze. “How is this possible? I’m touching you. Feeling your warmth.”

“Yes. Happened just after you’d left.” Any other time, she would have been mortified for him to see her like this: broken, helpless, naked but for a sheet covering her lower half. Her relief at seeing him alive and well, however, was simply too great.

“I will destroy the gods for this. How dare they do this to you! Allow you to feel only when you will be injured. The cruelty such an act requires… I will find a way to raid the heavens and I will—”

“No, no. This is a blessing. I’ve had time to think, and I believe I know what’s happening. Each time I admit something about you, like the fact that you did not deserve what was done to you, and that I trust you, I’ve been given back a piece of my life.”

His brows furrowed together, and a spark of hope entered his eyes. “Can you pass the camp boundary now?”

“No. My sisters carried me there, meaning to toss me out after my whipping, but that invisible wall blocked them.”

Fury replaced the hope. “We didn’t hurt your sisters—I knew you would hate it if we did, but now I wish I’d sliced each and every one of them to pieces. They abandoned camp or I would see to it now.”

“You’re here now. That’s all that matters.” And it was. “But…how long will you be able to stay?” Her nervousness returned. His king would want him back. And the Amazons would one day come back. This was not the first time their camp had been taken. They always came back. Angrier. Far more brutal. “You can’t remain forever, and I can’t leave. We’ll be forced to separate again and—”

“It’s all right. It’s all right, sweet. Do not worry yourself. Think only of healing. I’m here, and I’m not leaving without you. No matter what. You freed me. I will find a way to free you.”

The burst of strength her nervousness had given her drained, and she expelled a breath. “As long as I have you, I’ll be all right.” The words flowed freely. Talking about her feelings was becoming easier.

“Yes, you will.” He stretched out beside her and angled his head, displaying his neck to her. The scent of him filled her nose. Dark spice and tree dew. She inhaled deeply, savoring. “Drink,” he said.

“Wh-what?” Even when they’d been trapped on that island, he had not let anyone drink from him. Not from his wrist, and certainly not from his neck.

“Drink. I know biting and blood are distasteful to your kind, but you will heal faster if my blood flows inside your veins. I have watched others of my kind do this for their mates who were not vampires.”

“No, you don’t understand. I don’t mind drinking from you. I just don’t want to disgust you. I know you do not like such things being done to you.”

Precious little lights flickered in his eyes. “I want to give you everything, Nola. Even this. With you and no other. I need this, so please. Please.”

Please, this proud, strong man had said. How could she deny him? She cried out as she edged toward him—pain, so much pain—and sank her teeth into his neck, hard as she could, cutting past skin and hitting vein. Blood instantly trickled down her throat.

Once, the thought of doing this would have been distasteful to her, as he’d claimed. But this was Zane. She wanted him inside her. Any part of him that she could get. And like him, she wanted him to have everything she had to give.

“I never thought to allow someone to take from me again,” he said, petting her head. “I—I have to tell you something. Something that may make you hate me. But you deserve to know.”

Nothing could make her hate him. Nothing.

He did not give her time to tell him that. “The demon queen,” he continued. “I was her slave for many centuries. Her…bedmate. Willingly. She took from me whenever and however she desired. Her methods sickened me, but I allowed them because she had something—someone—my compliance was supposed to purchase.”

Nola released his neck. “I—”

“No. Do not speak. Keep drinking. There is more I must tell you, but my courage will abandon me if your mouth is gone from me.”

She sank her teeth back into his neck, the warmth of his blood spinning through her, lighting her up from the inside out.

“When she died and I was freed, I thought to never endure such things again. You, though, I think I would allow to do anything to me. It has been that way from the first. I don’t understand it, either. Your presence doesn’t drown out the memories or take away my revulsion for this act. My…need for you simply overrides it. Even though I fear you will find me, a dirty demon whore, unworthy of you. I am unworthy of you.”

“No,” she said, wrenching away. Blood trickled from the side of her mouth. “You are perfect. Wonderful.” She snuggled into his waiting embrace, head cradled in the hollow of his neck. The action pained her, but only a little. She could feel the flesh weaving together on her back. “Never say otherwise.”

“You…you do not wish to leave me now?” So hesitant. So unsure.

“If you are a demon whore, then I am an Amazon whore. When I was a child, my mother mated with a man and left the Amazon camp to live with him. They had no money and so they…sold me, time and time again,” she said, heat spreading over her cheeks. “I know the desire to never again be touched by another. Except you.”

“Oh, sweet. I am so sorry for what you endured. And you are not a whore. Never say such a thing.”

That gentle tone brought tears to her eyes. “If I cannot, you cannot.”

“Agreed.” He wrapped his arm around her, careful of her injuries. “You once told me your family had destroyed you, that you had killed them for it, but until now, I had no idea they’d done such things to you.”

She flattened her palm against his chest, exactly as she’d wanted to do all these months while watching him. His heart beat fast and hard. “Maybe we remind each other of what we were like, before. Unafraid, untainted. Maybe we see the future in each other and the past ceases to matter.”

He didn’t reply, which disappointed her. Instead, he settled her onto the blankets and sat up. Old fears surfaced. Did he not want a future with her? Was that what his silence signified? Did he—

He traced a fingertip along her spine, and she shivered. “All healed,” he said huskily. “And now, all mine.”

Thank the gods. She wasn’t sure what she would have done if he’d rebuffed her as she’d once done him. You should not have doubted him. Even for a moment.

She wouldn’t. Not ever again.

“Make love to me, Zane.” She’d never been with a man of her choosing. Never given herself completely. She was suddenly desperate to know what that was like. With this man. Only this man, who was surely a gift from the heavens, even amid her curse. “Please. Let us join.”

“Forever.”

“Forever.”