Summary: Sapphire's mate is her worst enemy. Can fated love overcome deep-seated hate?

What Works: There are some decent descriptions and action scenes. Sensory details are well integrated, creating an image in the reader's mind. Decent writing overall.

What Needs Works: The work is littered with overly long sentences, which can often be cut into two, three or even four smaller sentences. The dialogue is weak, completely unnatural and overexplains the plot. Dialogue can be a great way to present exposition, when it's also establishing characterization and building relationships between characters. Almost all the dialogue in this serves only to explain the plot, especially bits that have already been explained in the narrative.

Damien is a terrible character. Not because he's a sadist, but because he's boring. He's not nuanced, not developed. His speech pattern is grating, a forced familiarity that doesn't inspire terror or rage. He just annoys me.

The torture scenes are anticlimactic. Without stakes, there is no tension, and without tension, there is no plot. Now, there is tension, and therefore plot, but the stakes for the torture scenes are incredibly weak. Which is not good for something as dramatic and intense as torture. When Sapphire shows no reaction to her torture and recovers from it quickly, there are no stakes. Why should I care if Sapphire is tortured, when she herself hardly cares? Not that she needs to give into Damien's demands to scream, but show the reader how she struggles to hold back her pain or screams. Show how her previous torments have hardened her to this torment.

Overall: 5.5/10 Needs more editing, and substantial character development.