My hands are bound together behind my back as I rest against a large tree. My lip is swollen, my injury is without its coverings, and there is a soreness in my wings that makes me think some of my flight feathers have been plucked.
“You wake,” he says, crouching close by, watching me.
His knuckles are reddened. He struck me hard.
I say nothing, but spit blood onto the ground.
There is a life-stone blade in the male’s hand. He casually uses the tip to scratch at his forehead like one little slip would not slice him open. “I have been thinking about our last meeting,” he says, pointing the blade at me now.
“Glad to see I made an impression.”
The male chuckles but it is not a light sound. He stands and starts to pace in front of me. I am trying to loosen the binds at my wrists, but it is not easy and too much movement is risky.
“You wished to have claimed that boring female,” he comments.
I only answer with a snarl, risking a jerk of my shoulder as I try to free my hands.
Coming closer, the male crouches again, this time much, much closer. He presses the tip of his dagger to my chest, making me hold my breath. “But you have no heart-stars,” he states, dragging the blade like he’s tracing the patterns of my scarred skin. “And you never will.”
I clench my jaw.
The male looks at me and smiles as he nods his head. “I think I will participate in one of these exchanges the High Spears are forcing upon us. I can focus my attention on that boring little female. If the Goddesses gift her to me in matehood, I am sure I will find her interesting enough.”
I am about to promise breakings of bones and twistings of wings. I am about to promise to scoop both his seeing eyes out of his head, and feed them to the mountain hounds. I am about to break my own damn arm just to be free of these bonds so I can deliver my promises.
But I am stopped.
I am stopped by a voice that I first think is entirely in my head.
Perhaps that male has already killed me. Perhaps the stone he struck me with has knocked my mind from my head.
Because I swear -I swear- I hear the sweet voice of my little Bea.
“Hello?…. Oh, there you are!”
Chapter 28 - Bea
I act before the idea in my head is fully formed - somehow trusting that I will know the right thing to do once I reveal myself.
“Hello?… Oh, there you are!” I say, walking out from the large, black spotted leaves that had been concealing me. I don’t dare look at Zyntarr. If I do, I might break. “Someone said they’d seen you coming out here,” I say to the startled-looking male - the startled-looking male who is now backing away from Zyntarr, but still holding a vicious knife. “I’ve been looking for you.”
The male freezes, confusion crossing his brows. “You have?”
My heart thuds hard against my chest. “Yes,” I say, swallowing thickly. “I remember you from the last tribe gathering at the clearing. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you, actually.”
I’m trying so damn hard to not look at Zyntarr across from me, but in that moment, the growl he emits is too large a pull to ignore. He’s tied up, and littered with bruises and blood. And the murderous expression on his face could melt mountains.
“Is that so?” the male says, apparently too intrigued with the idea that I’ve got the hots for him to realize that any sane person would be freaking out if they happened upon the scene in front of me. Honestly, it’s like he’s completely forgotten Zyn is even still there.
Thatpisses me off.
I try to not let it show, though.
With a hint of a smile lifting one side of his mouth, the male turns his back on Zyntarr, and starts walking cockily toward me, his eyes roaming my body with every deliberate step.
He doesn’t comment on how I have a hand behind my back - a hand with a knife from the butcher’s block burning in my grip.
“I thought you favoredhim,” the male accuses, twisting his body ever so slightly so as to reveal Zyn bound and almost broken, his big, black wing pulling back like a curtain on a theatrical horror performance.
