by C. M. Cevis
The explosion several floors above rained glass and burnt hunks of furniture down onto the street where he, Owen and the media stood. It was the flaming back of his office chair that caught his attention enough for him to look up and see for sure what floor had exploded.
“That’s not good,” Samson said softly.
A preview of Civil Order, book 3 in this series…
Chloe’s eyes popped open in the darkness as her breath seized up in her lungs. It took her a moment to orient herself, to remember that she wasn’t seventeen anymore. That she was twenty-eight and didn’t need to worry about her foster father anymore. That she needed to breathe.
Not that she was out of the woods. She was still in a rather precarious situation, chained up against a cold concrete wall in underwear that she had been in since she’d arrived. But then again, she’d known that she’d get in trouble when she’d made the decision. Being punished like you were a vampire when you weren’t wasn’t fun unless you were hard to kill and super masochistic. Chloe was one of those things, evidenced by the fact that she was still alive.
The heavy metal door on the other side of the small room protested as someone swung it open, and once again Chloe was struck by the oddness that someone actually had what amounted to a dungeon in their basement. Maybe the elder that had been put in charge of her punishment was the masochistic one.
“Your punishment has been served. You are free to go,” the female voice said. Chloe wasn’t even sure of what the woman’s name was anymore. She was pretty sure that she’d introduced herself back at the beginning of her penance, but she’d been inventively injured so many times between then and now that she wasn’t sure what her own damn name was without having to think about it for a moment.
“Do I get my clothes back?” Chloe said, her voice much more of a whisper than she’d meant for it to be.
The woman entered the room and began undoing the chains that held Chloe in that terrible, awkward position. “I will take you to one of the guest rooms, where your freshly washed clothes will be waiting for you. You will be allowed to bathe before you leave.”
“Gee, thanks,” Chloe said. The woman shot her a look, and Chloe cursed her propensity to be a smart ass, even when it was clear that she needed to shut the hell up. “Sorry,” she said softly.
“Follow me,” the woman said as Chloe slumped to her knees. The woman didn’t move to help her up, but she did wait patiently while she remembered how to use her legs again.
Chloe had only seen the rest of the house briefly when she first arrived. She’d walked into the house knowing what she was in for and at peace with it because she knew that she made the right decision. It seemed like it had been forever ago that she’d walked past the opulent artwork that led to the bedroom that she’d undressed in, but the fact of the matter is that it had only been three days. Or it was only supposed to be three days. There hadn’t been any windows where she was being held.
The fact that she wasn't fully dressed didn't matter as she shuffled along the hallway behind her host. Three days wasn't long enough to lose muscle mass, but her legs did feel weak in their attempts to hold her body upright. Her feet drug along the carpet as she mentally took stock of her injuries.
There were bite wounds in various states of healing, and while they would take longer to heal then some of her other wounds, they would heal on their own. She was pretty sure she had a cracked rib or two, but there was no reason to go to a hospital for that. All they would do is wrap her up and wait for her to heal, and she could do that on her own. The woman in charge of her punishment did say that she’d had had some internal bleeding, but that had mostly cleared itself up. There was still some pretty spectacular bruising and a few gnarly cuts, but she had survived.
~*~
Civil Order releases in January 2020.
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https://authorcmcevis.wordpress.com
Also by C.M. Cevis:
Rime & Pyre
(Amazon e-novellas and Kindle Unlimited only)
Rejected Royalty
Noble Wound
Perfected Dynasty
Civil Origins
(Available in eBook and paperback format, as well as Kindle Unlimited)
Civil Seer
The Organization
(Available in eBook and paperback format, as well as Kindle Unlimited)
A Drop Of Nightshade
A Flowering Corpse (coming in June of 2019)
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