In Another Life 3: A Dark Secrets Novel (Dark Secrets #7.3)

Rule #2: Never Piss Off A Witch

"Ara," he demanded. "Just because you didn't say the word, just because you were too scared to say no, that doesn't mean it was consensual. And if it wasn't consensual, then it was rape. Say it." He shook me. "Say it aloud: he. Raped. Me."

Everything that could have gone wrong did so in the worst, most inhumane way possible.

After learning that David could help Jason simply by possessing the Mark of the King, Ara locks herself into a contract she wishes she hadn't signed with a literal kiss. With no escape from this marriage, she is forced to do everything in her power to make it work. Until another force moves against her.

When Ara learns that she carried the child of another man into the new marriage with David, tensions rise as the consequences of that legal nightmare come to light. But when a dangerous prisoner escapes David's torture chamber, somehow erasing his memory as she left, a manhunt begins and things become abhorrent between the newlyweds. Ara enters an almost decade-long period of extreme abuse and isolation, where not even those that loved her before have the power to help or to free her.

Desperate to make an escape after an old friend is killed by her sadistic husband, Ara will form an alliance with a blast from the past. But can she break free from David's abusive hold on her before he uncovers the plan, or will the masterful tyrant put an end to it and see all involved killed, like the last time?

A haunting account of torture and cruelty, and how unwittingly one can fall from power into the open prison of spousal abuse.