"I'm so sorry, Vane. I swear didn't mean to get us killed like this."

Vane Kattalakis ground his teeth as he fell back from trying to pull himself up. His arms ached from the strain of lifting two hundred pounds of lean muscle up by nothing more than the bones of his wrists. Every time he got close to raising his body up to the limb over his head, his brother started talking, which broke his concentration and caused him to fall back into his hanging position.

He took a deep breath, trying to ignore the severe pain of his wrists. "Don't worry, Fang. I'll get us out of this."

Somehow.

He hoped.

Fang didn't hear him. Instead he continued to apologize for causing their deaths.

Vane strained again against the sharpened cord that held his hands tied together above his head, secured to a thin limb, as he hung precariously from an ancient cypress tree over some of the darkest, nastiest-looking swamp water he'd ever seen. He didn't know what was worse, the thought of losing his hands, his life, or falling into that disgusting gator-infested slime hole.

Honestly, though, he'd rather be dead than touch that stank. Even in the darkness of the Louisiana bayou, he could tell just how putrid and revolting it was.

There was something seriously wrong with anyone who wanted to live out here in this swamp. At last he had confirmation that Talon of the Morrigantes was a first-rank idiot.

His brother, Fang, was tied to an equally thin limb on the opposite side of the tree where they dangled eerily amid swamp gas, snakes, insects, and gators.

With every movement Vane made, the cord cut into the flesh of his wrists. If he didn't get them freed soon, that cord would cut all the way through his tendons and bones, and sever his hands completely.

This was the timoria, the punishment, that they were both receiving for the fact that Vane had protected Talon's woman. Because Vane had dared to help the Dark-Hunters, the soulless Daimons who were at war with the Dark-Hunters had attacked Vane's Katagaria wolf pack and slaughtered his beloved sister.