“Please, I don’t want to be a… a Breeder.” She nearly spat the word. “You don’t have to do this—I ran away from them. Please, just let me go—oh!”

Her pleas were cut short when she was shoved roughly through an open door and into what looked like a half-empty warehouse with sawdust on the concrete floor. She stumbled and nearly fell, but managed to catch herself on a wooden box.

Heart hammering in her throat, she turned around, swallowing thickly as the door closed. She was now alone in the half-lit room with what had to be three female demons. The still-drawn blade in the red-haired one’s hand shimmered ominously.

She’d been warned. The demon who had captured and branded her had told her about the females of his kind—about the war between them and the males, and how the males had turned to human Breeders to procreate. He’d told her this with reverence, as if Selma would be proud she was one of the few humans who could carry a demon’s spawn. As if needing his protection against the females dead-set on killing any Breeder they came across was a boon.

“God, please don’t kill me, please! I’ll do anything you want,” Selma begged. She hadn’t come this far, hadn’t escaped one monster only to be gutted like a pig in a warehouse in Nowhere, Minnesota.

“Yes. Yes, you will.” The one with the cold eyes stalked in a semi-circle around her, forcing her to twist in an attempt at keeping an eye on all three. “But first, little human… First, we want information. Who’s your master?”

“I don’t have a m-master.” Under any other circumstances she probably would have been offended at the notion, but at that moment, her terror was too strong to allow for luxuries such as indignance.

“That pretty little mark on your forehead says otherwise.” The blonde one—the one who’d come up behind her when she fell—took a few steps closer, and Selma drew up against the box again, pressing her back into it. It felt oddly good and solid—normal—in a world of nightmares made flesh.

“I ran away before anyone claimed me.”

“Oh, really now? And how’d you manage that?”

Cold Eyes fell in from the side, trapping Selma against the box. Panicked tears blurred her sight, and she blinked rapidly to clear her vision. If she wanted any chance at getting out of this alive, she’d have to keep her wits about her. Whatever they wanted, she’d give them. She had zero allegiance to any male demons.

“I… I tricked him. Dr. Hershey—Marathin Hershey. The demon who captured me. I made him think I…”