The All Consuming: A Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 4) Read Online Free
Author: May Ellis Daniels
with blood-lust.
My son’s light brightens.
He feels her power. She gives him hope. Strength.
Behind me, so close I feel him brush against my shoulder, the Dog God snarls. “Keep her locked away, you fool. Keep that animal caged.”
A thin smile spreads across my face.
He’s afraid of her.
“I am my own keeper,” I say, echoing the words Opiyel spoke when we first met.
Opiyel seizes my arm and tugs me around to face him directly. My son’s eyes shoot open. He’s in his human form again, tiny and precious. It takes every ounce of willpower I have not to lash out at Opiyel. But I know doing so will put my son in even greater danger—
“Not here, my bride. Not in the Bloodless Land. Here I am your keeper.” Opiyel glances at my child. His lips curl in disgust. “You promised me your hand in return for your freedom from the cage. Then you traded your son for the lives of your friends in the Warm Land. You asked. I provided. Yet you still begrudge what is rightfully mine. I will have what is mine, Lily. And if it’s not granted willingly, I will take it from you. This is my land. Best remember that. For your wellbeing. And the wellbeing of those you hold dear.”
***
I’m standing naked on a round, raised stone dais in the center of the sandy courtyard between the palace and the Cliff of Cages. My ankles are chained and secured to an iron spike. The Dog God’s palace rises behind me, a hundred tall towers ringed with a wall of stone. The windows in the palace are black, like empty eyes glaring down at me. I shudder, thinking of those cold rooms and empty halls and a life spent bound to the hideous creature who haunts them.
In a cold room in that stone palace my unborn son’s life is fading. I look out at the endless expanse of desert. The overcast sky. The choking sand. Even if I could flee with my son, where would I go? What would sustain us?
No. Fleeing is not enough.
We’d still be trapped in Opiyel’s realm.
The Dog God must die.
Ahead of me the Cliff of Cages rises a thousand feet into the sky, casting a long shadow beneath its bulk. I’m close enough to hear the tortured howls and hisses and roars of the Pureblood animals caged inside.
I scan the top row of cages. There must be a hundred of them. Somewhere up there my brother, The One Without Value, is whispering in my bloodmate’s ear. Has Vuk told Aaron what he did to me? How he possessed Connor Lerrick’s body, entered the warm world many years ago, hunted me down and took me for his unwilling mate?
The thought makes my chest tighten.
Aaron is a loyal wolf. But the truth will crush him.
Which is precisely why the Dog God put the two together. So Vuk could harm my bloodmate with words just as surely as being caged harms his wolf.
I walk until the chain becomes tight and the metal shackle bites into my skin so hard it cuts. I wait for the warm feeling of blood tricking down my ankle, and when it doesn’t arrive I glance down. I’ve cut myself, but the wound doesn’t bleed. Blood is life, and there is no blood in this lifeless world.
I bite my lip, stifling a scream.
It’s my wedding day.
My dying son behind me. My caged and tortured bloodmate ahead.
Dogs begin emerging from shadows and crevices between the boulders stacked along the Cliff of Cages. Thin, scraggly, quick-eyed beasts with matted and torn fur dusted with sand and large ears and rows of sharp black teeth. The dogs slink toward me, their heads low, shoulders down. They pour from the shadows like liquid death, then I hear them barking behind me and turn to see more loping in from the sand dunes, so many they look like a living tide—
I pull and strain against my shackles.
All it gets me is another wound.
The dogs snarl and spit and bite at one another in their haste to reach me. They scent my life force. My attachment to the warm land. It’s what they feed on.
My legs weaken. I’m close to collapsing when the
My son’s light brightens.
He feels her power. She gives him hope. Strength.
Behind me, so close I feel him brush against my shoulder, the Dog God snarls. “Keep her locked away, you fool. Keep that animal caged.”
A thin smile spreads across my face.
He’s afraid of her.
“I am my own keeper,” I say, echoing the words Opiyel spoke when we first met.
Opiyel seizes my arm and tugs me around to face him directly. My son’s eyes shoot open. He’s in his human form again, tiny and precious. It takes every ounce of willpower I have not to lash out at Opiyel. But I know doing so will put my son in even greater danger—
“Not here, my bride. Not in the Bloodless Land. Here I am your keeper.” Opiyel glances at my child. His lips curl in disgust. “You promised me your hand in return for your freedom from the cage. Then you traded your son for the lives of your friends in the Warm Land. You asked. I provided. Yet you still begrudge what is rightfully mine. I will have what is mine, Lily. And if it’s not granted willingly, I will take it from you. This is my land. Best remember that. For your wellbeing. And the wellbeing of those you hold dear.”
***
I’m standing naked on a round, raised stone dais in the center of the sandy courtyard between the palace and the Cliff of Cages. My ankles are chained and secured to an iron spike. The Dog God’s palace rises behind me, a hundred tall towers ringed with a wall of stone. The windows in the palace are black, like empty eyes glaring down at me. I shudder, thinking of those cold rooms and empty halls and a life spent bound to the hideous creature who haunts them.
In a cold room in that stone palace my unborn son’s life is fading. I look out at the endless expanse of desert. The overcast sky. The choking sand. Even if I could flee with my son, where would I go? What would sustain us?
No. Fleeing is not enough.
We’d still be trapped in Opiyel’s realm.
The Dog God must die.
Ahead of me the Cliff of Cages rises a thousand feet into the sky, casting a long shadow beneath its bulk. I’m close enough to hear the tortured howls and hisses and roars of the Pureblood animals caged inside.
I scan the top row of cages. There must be a hundred of them. Somewhere up there my brother, The One Without Value, is whispering in my bloodmate’s ear. Has Vuk told Aaron what he did to me? How he possessed Connor Lerrick’s body, entered the warm world many years ago, hunted me down and took me for his unwilling mate?
The thought makes my chest tighten.
Aaron is a loyal wolf. But the truth will crush him.
Which is precisely why the Dog God put the two together. So Vuk could harm my bloodmate with words just as surely as being caged harms his wolf.
I walk until the chain becomes tight and the metal shackle bites into my skin so hard it cuts. I wait for the warm feeling of blood tricking down my ankle, and when it doesn’t arrive I glance down. I’ve cut myself, but the wound doesn’t bleed. Blood is life, and there is no blood in this lifeless world.
I bite my lip, stifling a scream.
It’s my wedding day.
My dying son behind me. My caged and tortured bloodmate ahead.
Dogs begin emerging from shadows and crevices between the boulders stacked along the Cliff of Cages. Thin, scraggly, quick-eyed beasts with matted and torn fur dusted with sand and large ears and rows of sharp black teeth. The dogs slink toward me, their heads low, shoulders down. They pour from the shadows like liquid death, then I hear them barking behind me and turn to see more loping in from the sand dunes, so many they look like a living tide—
I pull and strain against my shackles.
All it gets me is another wound.
The dogs snarl and spit and bite at one another in their haste to reach me. They scent my life force. My attachment to the warm land. It’s what they feed on.
My legs weaken. I’m close to collapsing when the
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