“Or maybe I’ll wait for my monster to wake up. Then I’ll kill you myself, and when the jungle inevitably takes me, I’ll meet you in Hell.” I canted my head and pressed a too-sweet smile. “I’ll torture you for all eternity for doing this shit to me.”
“Cool it with the dirty talk. We have to get you off the jungle floor.”
Before I could respond, we were in the air again. I looked wildly around, trying to take everything in as it blurred past. The trees grew close together. They stretched higher than some skyscrapers I’d seen in Boston, their trunks thick and winding.
When Vincent landed in a tree, I lifted my attention to the jungle canopy. Fairie was darker than I could have ever imagined. All the foliage was so overgrown that the sunlight barely reached even the highest branches.
Despite the shadows that encased everything, the place was humid. My skin pearled with sweat, and the thick fabric of my dress clung to me with all the breathability of a plastic bag.
“Where are we, exactly?”
Vin set me on my feet and leaped up a few branches to get a better view.
“Not far from my village,” he grunted. “I have to break through the jungle canopy to see where we are. I’ll need to shift to my smaller familiar form to make it past the branches.”
I squinted, craning my neck up at him. Then something higher above us dragged my attention away from Vincent to dark silhouettes suspended from the branches.
My stomach dropped. “Feral, what arethose?”
Chapter three
Well Past Reason
Vincentfollowedmylineof sight to the objects dangling above us. They were large, sphere-shaped, and suspended from vines like ornaments. They swayed ominously, even though there was no breeze to speak of.
My mate hunched down from the branch he perched on and offered me his talon-tipped hand. “Come. I’ll show you.”
He was kidding, right? At this rate, I’d rather rip his hand off than hold it. Once my monster woke up, he’d be lucky if his hand was the only thing she took as retribution for betraying his brothers.
The male’s brow furrowed low on his face, exasperation etching his features. “Calm yourself. I only wish to sate your curiosity. Take my hand. Trust me.”
Unease rippled down my back. I trusted Vincent—the vampire prince, not the vicious fae male who seemed to care more about my functioning uterus than anything else. Too bad my dark knight was fast asleep, just like my monster.
With Vin’s more savage side in control, I trusted him about as far as I could throw him.
I scowled at him and spat in his hand. “Eat shit, Feral.”
The atmosphere seemed to grow even more unbearably humid with the fae’s thinning patience. He closed his fist, my saliva gushing between his fingers with the crack of his knuckles.
“Brat,” he said in a rough voice that rasped over my skin like sandpaper. “You’re being difficult just to spite me. You should be smarter than that.” Each word pinged with dark amusement that seemed to teeter dangerously on the edge of his wrath.
Was I stubborn to the point of insanity?
Absolutely.
Would holding a grudge against the fae when I needed him to survive get me killed?
Maybe.
But by bringing me here, he’d made me his prisoner. I had no choice but to play the part of the weak little mortal until my monster awoke. Until then, I refused to be compliant in my role.
With a sniff, I turned my back to him and began my ascent to the upper level of branches to see what they were without his help.
I had never climbed a tree in my life—and this one was gargantuan—but with Vincent’s glare hot on my shoulders, I pushed myself higher and higher no matter how much my limbs groaned in protest or how deep the bark cut into my bare feet.
“You’re going to get yourself killed,” he commentated with a sigh. “Let me help you.”
I shot a withering glare down at him, taking pride in the way he seemed to flinch at the boiling hatred in my eyes. “You can help me by taking me home.”
