Born to be Bound

Claire

On Monday, I was happy, safe. On Tuesday, a violent escaped convict and his army of zealots conquered the most powerful city in the world… and women like me were driven into hiding.

The bodies of the once-powerful elite swing from the Citadel walls. Shepherd's Followers encourage chaos in the streets.

I starve. My friends suffer.

Had I not been desperate to help them, I would never have wandered into the Citadel—a nobody in rags—to beg Shepherd himself for food.

Everything went wrong. And now, locked in his private quarters, made his, I learn he intends to hand my friends over to his soldiers. But he doesn't know where they hide. And I will never tell him.

Shepherd

Born in Thólos's inescapable underground prison, raised in darkness and made into something unstoppable, I have conquered the city that created me. And as I crushed them underfoot, I found innocence… my female in the foul masses. Plucked her from the mire and locked the beauty away where war cannot touch her.

I keep my mate safe. Very safe.

Tended to, fed by my hand, dressed in silk. I know where to touch, what to whisper, how to give the relief she despises and craves. And when she forgets her place, with one growl I can make her ache for me.

I court her. Teach her.

And I make demands. Such as the location of the other precious females.

My stubborn, adorable bride refuses to tell me where her friends hide. But she can't keep the secret forever. My soldiers deserve mates as wonderful as mine.

And Claire will learn that I have ways to make her speak, and none of them involve pain. She will cry out, and it will make it all the sweeter when I break her devotion to her people and replace it with devotion to me.

"Unapologetically raw and deliciously filthy, Shepherd & Claire's dark, gritty story is an emotional punch to the gut!" — Anna Zaires, New York Times bestselling author