Captured Fate (Shadowblood Souls Book 3)

Captured Fate Book 3 in the Shadowblood Souls series All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. First Digital Edition, 2023 Copyright © 2023 Eva Chase Cover design: Sanja Balan (Sanja's Covers) Ebook ISBN: 978-1-998752-16-4 Paperback ISBN: 978-1-998752-17-1 Contents Free Book! Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Next in the Shadowblood Souls series Cruel Magic excerpt About the Author Free Book! Get Raven’s Fall, the companion novella to the reverse harem urban fantasy series Their Dark Valkyrie, FREE when you sign up for Eva’s newsletter. Click here to get your free ebook now! One Riva A painful tightness fills the middle of my throat. Before I’ve even opened my eyes, the urge to clear it grips me. But I can’t seem to swallow. I can’t make a sound. It’s not a lump in my throat but something squeezed against my neck from the outside. My eyes want to spring open. My muscles are braced to jerk into attack mode. But instead my body reacts as if I’m moving through mud. My eyelids lift sluggishly. My arms and legs squirm against a firmly padded surface. And jar to a stop when they hit restraints clamped around my wrists and ankles. I blink with the same blurry sluggishness, fighting to clear my hazy vision. A room comes into focus around me: shadows along the walls but bright light streaming over the center of the space where I’m trapped in this seat. It’s like a dentist’s chair. Except I don’t think those normally lock you in place. Of course, I’ve never been to a proper dentist before, only seen them in TV shows and movies. It could be the reality is much more frightening. But why the hell would I have been kidnapped by a dentist? Some psycho tooth doctor was so desperate to clean my teeth? My head’s been filled with mud too. My thoughts seep along dampened circuits. There was something, right before— We were in the facility—we’d gotten a bunch of shadowblood kids out— Running down the stairs after Jacob, urgency thrumming through my nerves. Dashing down a hall and into a room— Unbreakable walls thudding into place around me. And Jacob— Not Jacob. He called me Moonbeam. My heart lurches, and my limbs yank against the restraints even though I can already tell they’re built to withstand my supernatural strength. But as the resurgence of shock and anguish crashes over me, I’m remembering what happened next. The gas that poured down from the ceiling in a thick lavender gush, blotting out the man I was staring at and clouding my mind into nothingness. That’s where the memories stop. I have no idea what happened between that moment and waking up here, now. Panic trickles through the sludge in my head, sharpening my senses. Where are my guys? Were they caught too? What happened to the kids we got out—did Rollick and his people get them to safety? Where the hell am I? I open my mouth, wanting to call out, but the pressure against my throat chokes off any sound beyond a slurred mumble. A fresh chill winds around me. I won’t be able to scream like this. I can’t defend myself with my strength, my claws, or my killing shriek. Whoever’s holding me knows exactly what I can do and figured out a way to chain all of my talents. I clamp down on the jolt of terror with the instinctive discipline honed by years of training and combat in the ring. Freaking out isn’t going to help me. I have to focus. When I draw my awareness inside myself to settle my nerves, I pick up on the faint prick of sensation in the two thumbprint-sized blotches that mark my collarbone. The marks that formed when I slept with Andreas and Dominic for the first time. They’re here, wherever here is. Somewhere nearby, anyway. But I can’t tell any more than that they’re within maybe a hundred feet of me in different directions, and that they’re alive. What state they’re in beyond that, I haven’t got a clue. A soft rasp from behind me jerks me out of my thoughts. A shift in the air that tells me a door has opened. My pulse stutters, and I hold myself still to track the sounds. Careful footsteps tread across the floor toward me. As I turn my head toward them, an unfamiliar man comes into view. He walks until he’s nearly in front of the chair and stops there, facing me. His blue eyes study me assessingly. I assess him right back. He’s decently but not epically tall, with a fair bit of muscle under his polo shirt and slacks. Strong but no match for me if it comes down to hand-to-hand combat. A military-short cropping of carrot-red hair tops his face. His features have a hardness to them that makes me think of military discipline too. Faint wrinkles mark the corners of his mouth and eyes, and when he shifts his weight from one foot to the other, the light from overhead catches on a few faded strands amid his red hair. I’d guess he’s in his late forties. He isn’t wearing the typical metal helmet and vest that the guardians usually do. But I was captured in the depths of a facility. He must be