Chapter 31
Nahash hadn’t died yet, but he wished for it. The pain left behind by the guards’ beatings was nothing compared to the agony of being separated from Cass. Her scent-infused blankets only helped so much. Like just a taste of food for a starving man, it prolonged his suffering and made him hungrier.
In fact, the beatings reminded him he still lived, and that pain kept him from fully succumbing to deterioration—that and the fact that his captors would never allow him to die, not until they knew for certain that his child possessed his abilities.
They’d broken many bones during their beatings, but the doctors always healed them eventually, after letting him suffer—barely able to move—for what felt like days. They had to fix Nahash so he could eat and drink.
In some parts of his body, they’d beaten him so badly they’d left scars—deep enough that they probably wouldn’t disappear even after his next shedding. He idly wondered what Cass would think of the white slashes marring his scale pattern, and if she would find them as ugly as he did.
Of course, he knew he would never see her again. Even if he could escape, he didn’t know how he’d find her. He had no one else he could trust—no one who could tell him where they’d taken her.
It was during one of the beatings that Nahash awakened early from the drugging sleep that kept him from crushing the guards as they tortured him. His first instinct was to attack them immediately, but they’d already damaged his body to the point he wouldn’t be able to kill all of them before they subdued him, and he had four to contend with. The important thing was that he awakened early at all. That suggested he was building immunity to the tranquilizer they used.
That was the last thing he wanted them to realize, so he forced himself to lie still and suffer without reaction. It proved difficult, mostly because of the things they said. However, one of those things came from Dolis and gave him even more hope. The other male knew where the Iriduans kept Cass. A plan began to form in Nahash’s mind that allowed him to focus his attention away from his pain.
He intended to repay Dolis for every single blow to his body, and then he intended to take that baton Dolis used and shove it so far up Dolis’s ass that he’d be spitting out splinters.
He briefly considered swallowing him whole after that—while he was still alive so he could face the terror of it and the slow suffocation inside Nahash’s stomach as his digestive acids went to work, but the thought of eating another Iriduan still sickened Nahash. He wouldn’t allow himself to become the monster the Great Serpent had been—as tempting as such revenge might be.