Chapter 2 .

Freya

There was that  kind of pain that makes you weep set in right away. Like fire in the veins, up the arm to the chest. I made an attempt to get to my feet but my legs gave way and I was on the ground once more, vision going fuzzy at the edges. This was the end of me. Not a bride, not sold, just dead in a viper’s pit in the Whispering Woods. Better than Gasher’s attic.

Yet I could do nothing. My heart was in an irregular staccato, my breathing shallow, the venom was having its effect. And the snakes were slithering in, drawn by the vibration of me, the fear.

Until there was a change in the air, so fine I nearly didn’t notice it. They halted, forked tongues in the air, heads up. The hissing and rustling of the chamber was at an end.

And he was there.

I put it down to the venom playing tricks on me, making my head swim and my sight unsteady. A tall figure in black was coming out of a tunnel, moving with a liquid grace one would not expect of a man. He made no haste, simply glided over to me without a sound.

He was taller than any I had come across. Dressed in black silk and trousers and boots of fine leather, the colour of him seemed to absorb the light. His face was all angles, a lean jaw and high cheekbones, winged brows of dark hair over hooded eyes the colour of molten gold with pupils to match a serpent’s. Jet black hair fell like oil past his shoulders.

He looked like every dark fairy tale I'd ever heard when I was a little girl. He looked like death and sin and something far more dangerous. The way he gazed at me as if I were the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

My vision was so blurry, I was dizzy. I tried to speak, to beg for help, but all that came out was a weak, wet cough.

With a fluidity to his every motion he crouched before me. An intensity in his way of looking at me set my fevered skin on edge as he cocked his head. When he put out a hand I drew back, braced for some pain; what I got was the tenderest of touches from his long, elegant fingers as they swept a tangle of hair off my face. I had never known such tenderness.

“You have come to rest in my pit,” he intoned. There was a hypnotic quality to his voice, deep and rich, like honey on gravel. “One of my brood has seen fit to bite you. I make my apologies. They are territorial.”

My tongue was too heavy and my lips too numb to put in a word. The venom was on the move and with it my wits.

He flared his nostrils and his countenance underwent a subtle change, a hint of surprise giving way to something of a possessive nature. “You have an interesting scent, little one. You smell… impossible.” He drew in a breath and there was a low growl from his chest, dangerous and quiet. “The very scent of fate.”

A thump went through my heart, lurching and hard. I was aware of a terrible pressure in my chest as the venom made its way to my core and my body convulsed. I was dying of it.

“No,” he said, all business now. “Not when I have you. You are not going to die here.” His powerful hands closed over my wounded forearm with an authority that was startling.

He brought my arm up to his mouth. My mind was too addled to make much of the odd intimacy of the act with a snake bite behind it. I felt his lips on the wound and then he began to suck at it. It was a burn and a balm in one. With every pull of his mouth the poison left me and the fire in my veins was put out.

Sagging into him with a weak moan, I was taken in by his free arm and drawn to the broad expanse of his chest. For all the chill of the chamber he was warm, his muscles corded under the silk of his coat. I could smell him, that old, powerful musk.

He let go of my arm to spit a black wad of venom on the ground and looked at me again. In his golden eyes, hooded and intense, was something I could not put a name to.

“Let me see your eyes,” he made me.

I fluttered my lashes in compliance and for a second my vision cleared of the gray. I saw him as he was, his face inches from mine, so beautiful it was hard to believe.

“Now,” he drawled, his voice husky. “We will have the antidote, shall we?”

And he put his mouth to mine.

It was no human kiss, nothing a stranger would give. He came down on me as if to take a blessing and a jolt of electric fire ran from head to toe at the contact. His grip on my arm softened while his other hand went to the back of my skull to tilt my head and make of it what he would. His lips were soft and yet they commanded. I was being marked, sealed. Some old magic seemed to be at work, binding us.

King Salazar Kaan knew well enough how to counter the venom of his kin with a serpent shifter’s saliva. But the magic that flared at our first touch was unanticipated. He was rocked back on his heels, a guttural noise in his chest that was not of the predator but of one who has come to understand his destiny.

In a beat or two he was done. I was left with my heart hammering at my ribs, my breath in short gasps, my skin hot. The danger and the venom were things of the past. All that remained was the sizzling memory of his kiss and the man himself, this impossibly fine snake hunter.

His pupils were wide, the vertical slits in the molten gold of his eyes nearly gone. And I saw a tremor in his hands. This man was as much under the spell of it as I was.

“Who are you?” I croaked.

The smile he gave me was slow and devastating. A thumb caressed my jaw, softly and with possession.

“I am Salazar Kaan,” he purred. “King of the Serpent Nation and the Nightfang Dominion. And you…” he leaned close to murmur in my ear, “you are my fated mate, you beautiful little creature who has fallen in my den. I have waited centuries for you.”

Then the world went dark.