Heartless Foe

Heartless Foe Book 4 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: 978-1-998752-23-2 Paperback ISBN: 978-1-998752-24-9 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 Next in the Shadowblood Souls series Shadow Thief 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 I wake up with a jolt of my nerves. A tremor ripples through my throat, as if I’ve just finished shouting out a name. Dominic! My pulse is thundering. I shove myself upright and then sway with a rush of dizziness. Aches run down my back and arms. The stretch of a scab over a partly healed cut on my shoulder throbs. I blink, struggling to clear my glazed vision. I’m sitting up on a bed—a large bed, heaped with layers of sheets and a blanket. Whitewashed walls surround me. A vanity stands in one corner; a deep red rug covers most of the open floor. It doesn’t look like a prison. But I didn’t ask to be here, and I’ve been wrenched away from my men, again. My claws shoot from my fingertips to dig into the soft sheets, and my muscles tense to spring into action. But at the same moment, an overwhelming sensation rolls over me, pinning me in place like a boulder. We fought so hard. I went so far to carve our way to freedom. Do the guardians have their own claws so deep in us that we can never totally break free from them? The overwhelming sense of doom squeezes my lungs. I clench my jaw against it. Anger sparks beneath the suffocating fog, burning away the thickest patches. Whoever attacked us this time, they hurt all of us. They sent the truck and van crashing to the side of the road. The man who loomed over me when I lay bleeding on the roadside and claimed we’d helped him—he told the woman with him to shoot Dominic. What have they done to Dom? What have they done with all of my guys? The fresh zap of panic breaks through the rest of the fog. I scramble off the bed, my gaze darting around me, cataloguing every inch of the room that might hold a clue to escape. Around the edges of the rug, worn stone tiles show, giving the impression they’ve been walked on for decades, if not centuries. Thin beams crisscross the ceiling. Most of it is white like the walls, but delicate designs in pastel colors decorate some of the spaces between the beams. The curved headboard and the vanity gleam with rich brown wood and old-fashioned bronze detailing. Embroidered pillows lie on a window seat beneath a tall, arched pane that’s framed by gauzy red curtains to match the rug. None of this looks like a prison. It’s possibly the fanciest room I’d ever been in. What the fuck is going on? Are King Arthur and his knights going to show up next? I shake myself out of my daze of confusion enough to take better stock of my body. My upper arm and shoulder are bandaged, as is my side beneath the unfamiliar pastel-blue T-shirt I have on. Bruises mottle my lower arms and my calves when I tug up the legs on my equally new khakis. They’re already fading, but given my shadowblood tendency toward quick healing, that doesn’t tell me much. More disturbing are the metal bands wrapped around my wrists. I could believe they’re simply silver bangles if their thick, flat surface didn’t suggest a deeper layer of tech inside. Like the tracking anklets Clancy had us wear. Although these could at least pass for regular jewelry to someone who doesn’t know better. I tug at the bands experimentally and find them unyielding. I suspect even my full supernatural strength couldn’t snap them off. Maybe if I could hit them with a heavy tool… but it’s probably better not to test that until I discover exactly what they do. What the consequences would be. The glint of silver prompts my hand to my chest. But my fingers feel nothing beneath the fabric of my shirt. My necklace—the cat-and-yarn charm Griffin gave me so many years ago. It’s gone. Did I lose it in the crash, or did our new captors take it from me? Through the pang of loss, a rosy, citrusy scent tickles my nose. I duck my head lower and realize it’s coming from me. When I sniff my arm, the faint perfume winds into my lungs. My stomach knots. Whoever brought me here, they washed me up as well as bandaged me. Stripped me down and then dressed me up like a doll. They even rebraided my hair. I trail my fingers over the silver and darker gray strands and feel how smooth the woven locks are, with none of the grit or straggling flyaways from our battle with the terrorists Clancy sent us up against. As more of the haze in my head clears, I rest my hand against my collarbone. My necklace might be gone, but the