In a bone-jarring move that snapped her teeth together and elicited an instinctive snarl from her lips, Keshav shoved her to her knees in front of the men.

“Silence!” one of the men at the table commanded. Older, gray-haired, and pompous in formal, outdated clothing that included a brocade vest and cravat, he stood, and Eliana let her snarl subside to a low, warning grumble in her chest.

The one who’d stood glanced at Keshav behind her and nodded. Without warning, pain speared through her and her breath was knocked from her lungs as he kicked her, hard, in the kidney.

She fell forward, gasping, tears of anger and humiliation burning her eyes. She rested her forehead on the cool wood floor for a moment to regain her balance. The air was frigid on the backs of her bare legs.

I won’t beg. I will not.

The pompous one spoke, and his British accent somehow managed to make him seem even more arrogant than his posture and expression attested.

“I am Viscount Weymouth, Keeper of the Bloodlines. I will be in charge of these proceedings, and if at any time your answers do not satisfy me, I will order Mr. Keshav to administer another motivational little prompt, and another, until they do.”

There was a pause. “Do you understand?”

Eliana said to the glossy parquet floor, “No. I thought I was supposed to be silent. How can I answer your questions if I’m supposed to be—”

There came another kick, this one more vicious, to the ribs.

She moaned with the pain and would have curled into a little ball around it, but she was roughly dragged back to her knees by a hand fisted in her hair. She couldn’t right herself, though, because pain had absconded with her motor skills—and her ability to breathe. She gulped hoarse, hacking breaths, waves of agony radiating through her like fire. The only thing that held her upright was the fist in her hair.

She tried to go to the place of peace and relaxation in her mind where she went when she did her daily katas, but it was no use. Adrenaline and fear lashed her with the crack of a bullwhip, and it was no use.

“Attempts at humor,” intoned Viscount Weymouth, “will not be tolerated.”

Eliana heard Mel’s snarky reply in her head: Evidently.

“What the bloody hell is this?”

Eliana looked toward the shocked voice. From the door beside the end of the table, the Alpha’s brother had appeared, and he now stood staring at the viscount in livid, unblinking outrage.

Unapologetic, the viscount looked at him down the end of a long, aquiline nose. “It was agreed that I would oversee—”

“You weren’t granted permission to begin without us—and you weren’t granted permission to touch her!”

They started going back and forth, the brother outraged and Weymouth sputtering indignantly, the other men at the table throwing one another restless looks, deciding, it seemed, whose side to take.

Gods, how she loathed politics. She’d seen it since she was a little girl, the posturing, the pandering, the currying of favor done at court. There was always an intrigue and a scandal, a secret to be kept, a deal to be made. There was always a bully, always someone who felt loftier than their station, and always—like Weymouth—a climber in the bunch.

Finally, apparently sick of the discussion, the brother turned his attention to Keshav and spat, “Unhand her! Now!”

Perversely, that made her want to smile. She’d forgotten there was always a courtly knight, too. Then she felt another pang of regret that he wasn’t the Alpha. She’d bet anything his brother wasn’t half as knightly as he.

Keshav released her as if she burned. She fell forward again, but this time the brother was there to catch her. He steadied her, let her rock back onto her heels, and when she was ready, gently pulled her to her feet. He kept his hand, warm and steady, under her arm.

“A chair,” he directed to Keshav, between gritted teeth.

A chair was produced posthaste, and she sank into it with a whispered word of thanks.

Then the air in the room seemed to shift, a swift, snapping-to of attention that swept toward the door the brother had appeared through. Fighting a wave of nausea from the acute pain in her back and side, Eliana glanced up and froze.

The Alpha. It had to be him.

Dressed in the palest pearl gray button-down shirt and black slacks that showcased the lines of his lean, muscled physique, he might have been anyone, except for this:

He was ferociously beautiful.

Shining black hair that brushed wide shoulders, classical features, a mouth that seemed a little too sensual for a man. Piercing yellow-green eyes like the others, dusky skin like them, too, and there was something else that set him apart, something about his posture that screamed power. Even just standing still in the doorway he exuded a rapacious energy, violent and wild, that pulsed outward from him like a bubble, encompassing everything around him.

This was no commoner. This wasn’t even a lord, though undoubtedly he was titled, landed aristocracy of the Empire.

This was a king, through and through.

Effortlessly, he commanded all their attention and held it as he silently surveyed the scene. Eliana felt the fleeting, electric brush of his gaze as it rested on her, then profound relief when it passed.

Her father—her mad, evil, genius father—had the same kind of presence. The same kind of easy, elemental power. Eliana briefly wondered if this king was insane, too, but that thought was obliterated by who appeared next.

The Alpha took a slow step away from the door and held out a hand. A long, white arm appeared from the shadows of the door as if in a stage drama, its wrist and hand bent in a motion of fluid, feminine grace. The pale hand rested in the Alpha’s, and then the woman attached to that gracefully curving arm stepped over the threshold and into the light.

And all Eliana’s pain and fear simply vanished.

It was instant and total, the feeling of kinship. Of kindred. It was also colossally stupid, because she knew nothing of this woman or this king or this land, but just looking at her face imbued Eliana with a feeling so warm and relieved and profound it could only be called homecoming.

Or maybe insanity.

The woman paused a moment, studying her. Garbed in the plainest gray wool dress, without cosmetics or jewelry or a single ounce of apparent effort, she was easily the most stunning woman Eliana had ever seen. Her face and figure, her skin, the loose, golden hair that cascaded over her shoulders to her waist—everything was perfect and utterly unblemished, like some kind of master artist’s representation of an angel, of ideal, feminine beauty.

Picasso would have killed to paint your portrait, she thought. Michelangelo would have sold his soul.

It brought a faint smile to her lips. Seeing it, the Queen looked momentarily bemused. Then, impossibly, her own lips curved, a slight, upward tilt that her formidable husband didn’t miss.

He looked back and forth between the two of them. Sharply, he directed, “Viscount. Carry on.”

The warm feeling of homecoming was snuffed out, replaced by a very non-warm feeling of dread.

The viscount shot the Alpha’s brother a smug, victorious look, but it turned sour when the Queen spoke.

“Why is she half naked?”

Everyone froze. Her husband drew in a breath, his lips flattened.

“And handcuffed?” She turned to the viscount. “Weymouth?”

Her voice—the unembellished American accent startling in the midst of all this English regalia—was exquisitely neutral.

The viscount shifted his weight from one foot to another. “She was brought in with handcuffs, Your Majesty, and it would be prudent to keep her in them—”

“Surely all you men could manage to control one collared woman?”