Feral Blood (Bound to the Fae #2) - Eva Chase Page 0,1
to a stop a few feet away from him, the news I have to deliver forming a lump in my throat. I force it out. “I think I saw one of the men from Aerik’s cadre on the hills past the houses, watching the keep.”
Sylas’s lips pull back from his gleaming teeth with a restrained snarl. I thought of him as a grizzly when I first met him, and he’s never fit that impression better than right now. August leaps to his feet with surprising nimbleness given his strong but stocky frame, his gaze darting to the door, his posture tensed as if ready to lunge straight into a fight. Whitt draws himself up at his typical languid pace, as if he’s not particularly concerned despite the others’ reactions, but his ocean-blue eyes have turned stormy.
“He left,” I add quickly. “A few seconds after I saw him, he took off. He was in his wolf form—I’m not completely sure it was him. But the color of his fur was just like his hair, this blueish white, and the way he moved…”
Just remembering the cock of the wolf’s head so like the cruelest of my former captors, I find myself wrapping my arms around my chest. Sylas takes a step toward me and sets a firm hand on my shoulder. Ferocity still smolders in his unscarred eye, but it’s for me, not at me.
“He will not touch one hair on your body,” he says, so emphatically I can hear the vow in the words. “Not him nor his cadre-fellows nor that pissant Aerik.” He looks at his cadre. “From her description, it’d be Cole.”
Whitt nods, his mouth slanting at a displeased angle. August runs his fingers through the short strands of his dark auburn hair, his golden eyes more unearthly than ever with a protective fury burning in them. His voice, normally buoyant with its enthusiasm, contains the edge of a growl. “He was trespassing on our territory.”
Sylas looks at me. “Did he see you?”
I think back to my frozen moment by the upstairs window just minutes ago. “I’m not sure. But he was far enough away that even if he noticed me at the window, I don’t think he could have made out much other than the shape of me and the color of my hair.”
One of my hands rises to finger the strands that trail over my shoulders. In an offering of kindness when I first arrived here, August used magic and faerie fruit pulp to dye my natural dusky brown a deep pink that wouldn’t be unnatural on a fae woman.
At the time, the change seemed frivolous, a superficial way of moving beyond the abused captive I’d been for the past nine years and reclaiming something of my real self. Now, it’s also a line of defense—my former jailors aren’t searching for a pink-haired woman.
Cole. I have a real name for the man with the blue-white hair and sharply jointed limbs who took such pleasure in using the pointed edges of his body to draw pain from mine. A memory flickers up of my cheek being mashed into the hard metal floor of my cage, a harsh chuckle in my ears. Fingers digging into my cheek and an elbow ramming against my ribs as Aerik’s other cadre-chosen sliced my wrist to steal my blood…
I don’t realize I’m shaking until Sylas’s grip on my shoulder tightens and I feel myself shudder against his hand. My lungs have clenched up, my throat straining to draw breath into them. I hug myself again, tighter, fighting to get a hold of myself.
It’s over now. It’s over, and I’m not going back to that filthy cage or the horrible monsters that look like men.
“Not one hair,” Sylas repeats, his deep baritone managing to be both fierce and soothing. “I’ll tear their throats out if they so much as try.”
August steps toward me as if he can shield me from the horrors inside my head, his teeth bared. “If I don’t get to them first.”
I take gulps of air, focusing on the solid warmth of Sylas’s hand, the determined blaze in August’s eyes. The tremors subside. My chest still aches, but the panicked tension releases enough that I can inhale fully.
Whitt has stayed where he was, a little apart from our cluster of three. In the past, he’s defended me—but he’s also accused me of threatening the cohesion between the cadre and their lord. I’m still not totally sure where I stand with him.