Asha Shankur had been careful and strategic from the time that she learned what it was to truly be an asset rather than a hindrance in her pride, cultivating the skill of diplomacy and grace. Not once did she believe that her role amongst her people would be yanked from beneath her. Or that they would sell her to the highest bidder. And the day she met her soon-to-be husband, a man whose brutality was infamous for its inability to be curbed, was the day she knew she was terribly, terribly wrong. Scarred in ways that she'd rather not examine, cold and able to kill without so much as a flicker of remorse, Taras Verochka is what she considers to be an utter nightmare. And no, the beauty of his face doesn't make up for that. Nor does his lovely hair. Or those sharp, intelligent but frigid eyes. She is in no ways interested in the breadth of his shoulders. Nor the starkness of his mocking smile. Asha doesn't care in the least bit when layers of a man she so ardently thought to be an absolute beast begin to peel back bit by bit to show her a softness she never knew existed; a boy who'd been broken down and built into a toy for his father's purposes. It definitely doesn't bother her to see him manipulated into acting on base urges. No. No. No. She doesn't... She can't... All right, perhaps she cares a little. But it's totally against her will! When things begin to unravel amongst the Verochka pride, revealing treachery that runs deeper than she could have ever imagined, Asha unearths a side of herself that is eerily similar to her mate as she begins to understand his affinity for following the savagery in his blood. And as their bond grows stronger, so do her long buried animalistic instincts.
