Skrillex was shaking, unrelenting tremors that crawled across his black-splashed back and skittered down his frozen limbs. It felt as if someone had skinned him alive, so agonizingly aware was he of the she-wolf’s electric presence as it sizzled against his firing nerves. Her scent flooded the cozy woodland space; Skrill tried to focus on the crispness of pine needles and the dank pall of river mud, but the lamia’s perfume conquered these background musks with the decisiveness of a queen crushing an enemy under her boot. Black orchids and jasmine. Summer nights and warm amber. Blood. Rich, wine-red, forbidden . . . Saliva pooled in his mouth and the white knight swallowed reflexively. Venom-green portals locked with polished jade as if shackled.

She was a stunning, striking, exemplary goddess, dressed in a gown woven from the night sky. She allured him. Terrified him. Captivated him. Repulsed him.

The subterranean growl that purled from her throat resonated within Skrillex’s pounding breast and coaxed forth a similar sound in reply. However, where the queen’s snarl reverberated with savage warning, the sound shuddering in the deepest folds of Skrill’s larynx contained only need. That accursed part of himself he thought he’d starved into submission reached out across space and found its kind in the child-eating demoness. No trace of shame marred her flawless visage. She glared at him openly, brazenly, daring him to challenge her. And though Skrillex mourned the death of this innocent pup, despite the violent twist in his guts that accompanied the stench of half-eaten viscera, he could not defy her. I really am a sick beast, the masked monster managed to think, his twitching jowls revealing the gleam of tainted fangs. Everything is wrong with me.

“J . . . Jaidah?” he forced himself to speak her title, as if the laborious process of forming words might rip him back into reality and rescue him from this surreal hell. His ears flattened at the rasping quality of his own voice. He sounded as if he’d seen a ghost. Her next words startled him, bringing the poison of his glassy gaze back to her perfect face and away from the mangled scene to which it was beginning to stray. She thought he wanted . . . that? That tiny broken body, mutilated past recognition?

A deep, shivering exhalation left Skrillex’s lungs and brought some of his icy trepidation with it. Apparently, he wouldn’t be able to simply walk away from this horrific scene. His very soul—damned as it was—commanded him to stay. The urge to be near this femme fatale, to smell her, to listen to her, to touch her, was so powerful that to disobey would bring the ivory warrior physical pain. He could no more ignore his own nature than remove his still-beating heart from his chest.

Skrillex took a step toward her, inky hackles lifting as if he’d walked into a magnetic field. Hunger wrestled the uncertainty from his acid irises. “What if I’m not interested in your kill?” he murmured, tilting his cranium. “What if I’d rather take a bite out of you?”