“I am not your slave, and never will be,” Erik retorted coldly, his gray eyes glowering up at the man who dared consider himself his owner. Despite the fact that he had just woken from a drugged state, he was completely alert, though breathing deeply to keep the fear and anger from consuming him. Given the strength and weight of these chains, brute force alone was not going to get him out of this place. Becoming consumed by his emotions would cloud his rational thought and judgment, only making his predicament worse. But despite his best efforts, his vampiric eyes literally glowed red as he stared into those of his captor. The man's thinly veiled insults, his calmly superior demeanor, somehow threatened to infuriate him even further. His tone continued to be caustic, with just a note of righteous fury, as he sat up on the plush bed and continued his rant.

“My place is with my men, not here in this tacky room, being talked down to by some damned slaver. I will not let you hard break me, and I will not be yours. I'll rot here first. And 'We'll do great things together'? What the hell do you think you have in mind? You're a slave owner. As far as I'm concerned, you're part of the problem in this world. No one deserves to belong to another, and I will die before I allow you to take away my free will,” the vampire leader declared boldly. 

Curious as he was for information, he would rather rot here than dare allow the other man's threats to hold any sway upon him. The room around him was lush, opulent, and enormous. A larger canopied bed, made of the finest wood and adorned with sheets of the finest cloth, filled a small portion of it. There was an adjoining bathroom that also looked huge. Clearly this was a man of money. But why the hell did his captor want him? Maybe after he had been taken out, slavers had sold him to this rich guy. So many questions, but which was more important, proving his defiance or acquiescing just enough, acting just polite enough to find out what was going on?