Claire looked out the window as if considering the idea. It was a beautiful day. Not a cloud in sight. The blue so bright it hurt her eyes. The idea of stepping outside held its appeal. She’d been cooped up for two days. But his steadfast refusal to help her still pricked her temper. “No.” Her voice came out hard, clipped, implacable.

“No?” Clearly, Helen had not expected a refusal. She shook her head, scowling. “Darius wants you to walk with him. You have to come.”

“I don’t have to do anything.” Leaning back on the bed, she folded her arms behind her head.

Helen clenched her fists at her sides and looked inclined to physically toss Claire off the bed.

Confident that she could overpower the woman, Claire lifted an eyebrow and challenged, “Think you can make me?”

With a grunt, Helen spun around and marched out of the room. The lock sounded behind her.

Seconds passed until Darius’s arrival. Claire eyed his scowl, feeling a flash of satisfaction to see she had cracked his implacable exterior.

His lips pressed into a hard, inflexible line. “Walk with me.”

“No,” she shot back. “I want to go home.”

“This is your home now.”

“No!” Tired of everything in her life being out of her hands, she pounded a fist against the mattress. “I can spend eternity in these walls, but it will never be home to me.”

He strode across the room and yanked her off the bed, reminding her just how strong he was, how dangerous.

“I’ve been patient with you thus far.”

“I can think of several choice descriptions for you—patient isn’t one of them.”

“Indeed?” His gaze crawled over her face, studying her as if she were some strange creature, a bug under a microscope that he’d never seen before. “Would you like to see me truly impatient? Make a comparison?” His voice was soft. Too soft. The hairs on her neck prickled. She wiggled to get free, alarmed at the change in him, as if something had been unleashed.

He brought her flush against him, his hands rough. “I don’t have to wait for the full moon, you know. Four days is a long time to wait for something I want… for something I can have right now.”

She struggled harder, realizing she had been foolish to provoke him. He had lulled her into thinking he was nonviolent. A packless lycan that chose not to feed, not to kill. She had pushed him too far. He was still very much a wild animal. Soulless.

Darius shoved her back on the bed, his body following her down, crushing her into the mattress. She whimpered at the heavy weight of him driving her into the bed and beat against his chest and shoulders.