Thackery’s hysterical shouting shattered into wordless shrieks of pain that sliced their way from his throat like jagged shards of glass—chipped smaller and smaller as the monstrous red-eyed monster buried his fangs in Thackery’s throat and crushed. He could hear the crumble and pop of his own cartilage and muscle tissue, the wet rip of flesh sawed away by serrated teeth. His windpipe collapsed—brutally smashed from the sheer force crunching the demon’s jaws together—and suddenly his voice died with a pitiful hiss, that final scream unable to echo off the cave’s arched ceilings. A terrible pressure pushed at the inside of the blonde wolf’s skull, fists behind his eyes and cement pouring down his sinuses, blood unable to continue its path back to his heart; his diaphragm hitched, struggling to pull air into emptied lungs, hideous gagging noises gurgling from the back of his mouth; the taste of his own scarlet life force flecked the base of his tongue and Thacks reflexively heaved—yet with no breath and no voice all he could do was writhe like a fish with its guts spilling out. Paws scraped uselessly against the beast’s chest a final time, scratching through midnight fur and leaving no damage. Thackery’s vision was nothing but crimson—the pulse of those ruthless hellfire portals and the haze of his dying brain—and soon even that color began to speckle and fade to black at its edges . . .

This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening . . .

A fountain of red-hot carmine burst from the golden boy’s punctured artery. The heat of his own blood—already painted down his throat—stole the warmth from the rest of his body, the glow of life itself leaking away with fatal swiftness. A single sickening gush, and Thacks instinctively went limp. His body knew it was dead. There could be no recovery from this mortal wound. Unimaginable agony remained the only thing holding his consciousness just above the ravenous darkness waiting to consume him. It was hooks rusted into his skin and hoisting him upward. It was acid sizzling through the fluid in his veins. It was a collar of needles stabbed around his neck and forcing his cranium over the waves, gasping, while death struggled to wrench the rest of him down. He did not want to die. But he also did not want to suffer, did not want to endure another unbearable second of dying. And as stuttering heartbeats dragged on and Thackery still heard the lecherous slurps of the other male gulping down his blood like wine the young varg wondered what in fuck’s name he’d done to deserve such a fate.

When the obsidian devil unhinged his jaws, Thackery did not react. Sky blue eyes stared sightlessly up into the fathomless abyss of the cave, his mind buried by torment. He awaited the numbness. The fade. That transition from lying on his spine, drenched in iron-rich liquid, to blissful nothingness.

It did not come.

No. It got worse.

Thackery’s vocal cords had been pulverized by his attacker’s knives—but something was stitching them back together with thread of fire. He managed to inhale a massive breath and release it in a SCREECH that slammed against the rock and reverberated savagely through the cavern, torture multiplied by a hundredfold. And the threads were whipping through his whole frame—around each bone and tendon—cutting like razor wire only to bind his skeleton up like a ball jointed doll. He seized, twisted, convulsed, flailed. He parted his maw to scream again—and vomited a red-black geyser into the stone by his head, the thick splat sound of it enough to make his abdomen clench a second time. Blood dribbled from his ears, poured from his nose, his eyes—his EYES! Thackery blinked, and to his visceral horror the action squeezed out vitreous fluid and slimy discarded membranes, the repulsive sensation not unlike slugs being pushed from his eye sockets. Clotted coughs and cries stumbled into pathetic, terrified moans as the sun-hued wolf wiped frantically at his face, leaving streaks of mucus on either side of his muzzle . . .

“What is this . . . what the fuck is this?!”

A fresh sword of pain lanced through him—and this was when the unholy creature shoved a raving and helpless Thackery onto his stomach. The azure-eyed boy had no notion of what was happening to him. It was only after his nightmare transformation had finally completed—new eyes staring in shock at a stunningly clear picture before him—that Thacks felt the demon male withdraw and hop off his back. He gasped, chest heaving, crumpled there on the ground. Humiliation tore into him. If it were possible, the realization of what this bastard had just done hurt more than the inconceivable hell Thackery had just survived. His nether regions ached. It took him several tries to stand, limbs shaking uncontrollably and every single muscle and nerve fiber wailing its agony.

“You . . . You . . .” Language failed Thacks. His voice ground hoarse from his abused larynx. He swallowed hard, slowly dragging himself away from the onyx assassin while never taking his eyes from that smug, evil façade. “What have you done to me? WHAT THE FUCKING SHIT WAS THAT?!”