Prologue

200 years ago

Ares-

Blood.

Sweat.

Pain.

I groaned out as my fingers fought to find their way to undo the chains that were wrapped around my wrists, holding me prisoner to the ceiling above. With every movement I made, my muscles ached a little bit more, my bones shattered a little bit more. I could almost feel my body deteriorating. I had to get out. I had to escape.

It’d been weeks since my abduction, the humans had found a way to lure me in and trap me and now here I was, facing nothing but torture and though they tried, day and night, they could not break me. They could not deter me from being me. I would die before I gave into them, I would kill them before they could make me give into them.

They wanted to get rid of my species so that they could be the only and most dominant species alive but they had no idea that this war that they had started would soon end them all. I would make sure of it.

Clenching my fists, I yanked on the chains with everything that I had, I could hear the chains giving in, soon enough they wouldn’t be able to hold back the power that surged through me. I’d break free and I’d break each and every single bone in those humans. I’d make them suffer, a slow and painful death.

Inhaling my rage and exhaling my wrath, I studied the room I was in. It was a dungeon, a small confined space that held only instruments of torture, had I been weak, I may have felt claustrophobic in this place with its out of date brick walls and grey stone floors. There were torture instruments lined up on the stone wall. Ones they had used on me over and over again, ones that I would repay them for tenfold.

Taking a deep breath, I listened in as I could hear footsteps outside of the door, hushed whispers and the familiar voices of my captors and then I heard something strange, someone strange. Her voice was a delicate sound of symphony, she was soft spoken and elegant and she was nervous. I could feel it and my feeling was confirmed when the door opened and in came a breathtaking girl along with my captors.

Almost forgetting where and who I was, I stared at her beauty and when she caught my eye, she held my gaze captive. There was something different about her. She was different. I could sense it in her presence, she wasn’t like them, no, she was special.

“This is the subject. Maybe you can get him to tell us where the rest of his species are hiding at. Be careful, he is dangerous. Should he try anything, hurt him.”

One of the men said to her as he left with the rest of the men. Leaving me alone with only her in the dungeon they had locked me in. She looked shy, fearful even as she slowly walked over to me, I could see the hesitance in her hypnotising silver orbs as she took slow steady strides towards me, the pounding of her heart filling up the silence of the room, matching the rhythm of mine.

“Hi… Contrary to what you may think, I’m here to help you.”

There it was again, her soft delicate voice, it made my insides churn. It made me want to rip out of these chains and cup her face into my hands and kiss those plump lips.

“I’m good at communication so they thought to use me as a last resource in order to get you to talk. Of course, they thought my looks would contribute to the factor,” she says with an awkward laugh.

Is she insecure about her beauty? That would be obscene. She is the single most breathtaking creature I have ever seen.

She fiddled with her fingers as she looked down then back up at me, she was close now, just a few inches away from me. Every part of my body wanted to take her, to touch her, the strong feeling was too overwhelming to ignore.

Her long, waist-length silver hair made it almost unbearable to not want to run my fingers through it, a part of me wanted to run my fingers through her platinum locks and feel the softness of her strands, another part of me wanted to yank on her hair as I took away her innocence.

She was short, much shorter than I, 5’2 maybe. She was no match for my 6’5 self and that excited me even more, I wanted to take her, I wanted to overpower her, I wanted to trap her beauty beneath my body and watch her squirm.

“I’m not here to help them, I’m here to help you.”

She spoke in a hushed voice, that’s the second time she said she was going to help me and I was confused. Why would she want to help me? My question was cut short as I realised why she was helping me, lifting her shirt and exposing her bare stomach to me, I watched as her soft skin changed into scales and then changed back to normal. She was one of us, she was a Siren.

“Once I free you, you need to run. Please don’t seek revenge, don’t try anything dangerous, I am putting my life at risk to free you, I beg you not to make me regret it.”

Her words sank down my chest, she really was risking her life to save me. Did they even know what she was? I didn’t think so, otherwise they would’ve never risked her helping me. After all, I was one of her kind. But I couldn’t promise I wouldn’t take revenge, even if it wasn’t now, even if it cost me my life, I would take my revenge, they dared test me and now they would have to live with the consequences.

All of my thoughts stopped, all and everything I was feeling halted the moment I felt her small fingertips trace across my stomach and from her reaction, I knew she felt it too. The hair on my skin stood at attention as I eyed the girl before me, lost deep inside her eyes, I could see myself in them. She was mine. After centuries of searching, I finally found my mate.

Trapped in the same thoughts and emotions as me, it took her a long time before she pulled her hands away from my body, instantly pulling herself together even though she was still a mess.

“I…”

She whispered, clearly trying to come up with something to say, anything but came up empty

“Mine”

I could see that my statement had caught her off guard as she looked at me in shock. She wasn’t expecting to find her mate when she came in here to help me escape but here we were and now that I’d found her, I wouldn’t let her go. Once I was out of these chains, once I took my revenge on the shallow humans, I’d come back for her, I’d take her and keep her, for she was, she was everything that I’d been searching for.

And I’d die,

Before I let her escape me.