His footsteps echo as he walks down the endless prison corridor.

Shadows coil around his arms and legs, almost as if they are alive. They slink around his ankles like cats.

His nostrils flare as a sweet, familiar scent hits them.

She’s peering through the barred window of one of the cells ahead, her back to him.

He tilts his head to one side. Is this his dream, or hers? Has he merely imagined her? Or is this a consequence of the bond between them?

Her red hair cascades down her back, almost the colour of blood in the gloom. It’s as if she’s been plucked from her bed and dropped here. She’s wearing his shirt, the one he gave Callum for her to put on after James bit her. It’s too big for her. It caresses the soft curve of her behind and strokes her thighs. Her calves and feet are bare. He swallows.

She stiffens like prey, and he wonders if she senses him watching. Then he follows her gaze. A writhing mass of shadow surges towards her. The jailer of this prison is coming.

Blake prowls towards her as she edges back. She bumps into his chest, and he hooks an arm around her waist – clamping a hand over her mouth before she can scream.

He brings his lips to her ear. ‘You shouldn’t be here, little rabbit.’

She stills in his arms.

And how he loathes her. He loathes the way her scent washes over him – even here. She smells like the slither of moonlight that would drift through the grate of the cell beneath the palace. Freedom, taunting him. The broken promise of something he cannot have.

He loathes how soft and warm she feels, how his cock stirs at her proximity. He loathes how the wolf he keeps on such a tight leash longs to sink his teeth into her.

Footsteps approach.

He drags her through an open cell door. It clicks shut behind them. Her attention shifts to the emblem carved in the obsidian beneath the barred window: a key with two crescent moons in the bow. He wonders if she knows what it means. Most wolves would – it’s a remnant of when the acolytes rose a century ago, but this symbol is not common in the Southlands. They don’t worship the darker gods there.

Her elevated pulse drums in his ears. His arm tenses against her torso. ‘Shh.’

The temperature drops, and Blake’s breath mists in front of his face. Aurora inches back, as if desperate for warmth, even from him. He holds her tighter.