VALEN
My little Princess is not happy with me right now. To be honest, I’m not very fucking happy myself. I had hoped to have at least one more night under a roof before we had to start into the forest.
Thornmere looks foreboding at night—even to me and I know I can Shift into my Drake and fly away if I need to. But actually, the tree cover might be too dense to allow that—I have a feeling that once we enter the forest, I’ll be stuck in my human form if I’m not careful.
This is going to be a tricky situation, even by daylight. I decide that we should wait until dawn to put our feet on the twisting path that leads into the forest. When I tell Irena this, I’m braced for a fight, but she agrees almost at once.
“Yes, let’s wait until morning to go find the Sorceress,” she says and when she looks at the trees, I see fear in her lovely silver-green eyes. “That’s probably safer.” She shivers. “Though I wish we were still at the inn.”
“Well, we could be if you hadn’t gone out to the Common Room to stir up trouble,” I growl at her. “Why did you go out there, anyway?”
She bristles at once, angry as a cat getting a bath.
“I went out to try and get some information about the forest,” she informs me. “And I heard some very interesting things before that awful man attacked me.” She shivers and a haunted look comes into her eyes that almost makes me feel sorry for her. “He was dragging me away and nobody even cared!”
“I noticed that,” I say grimly. The way some males think it’s their right to use any woman they want to satiate their urges makes me angry. Fucking rapists.
Irena shoots me a sidelong look.
“Why did you help me?” she asks. “I mean, like you said, we’re enemies. Why would you stop him from doing…” She swallows hard and I hear a dry little click in her throat. “…what he was trying to do?”
I frown and cup her chin, lifting it so our eyes meet. Her skin is devastatingly soft.
“Look, sweetheart—I might have a huge, fire-breathing Drake inside me, but that doesn’t make me a monster or a beast. I’m not going to stand by and watch a woman get raped—not even my enemy.”
She blinks, as though she’s surprised, then nods her head.
“Thank you for saving me. I…may have misjudged you.”
“I’m fairly fucking certain you have,” I say dryly. “Your people think that because we have Drakes inside us, we’re nothing but blood-thirsty beasts.”
“Well, you do drink blood,” she points out.
Her words make my throat feel dry.
“Yes, we do,” I murmur, holding her eyes with my own. “Which is something we’ll need to talk about in a little white.”
Her cheeks turn pink at once and I can tell by the change in her scent that she’s thinking about the last time I drank from her—the way her body responded so eagerly to my touch. Hmm, it’s going to be fun to drink from her tonight—my cock surges at the thought of making her even hotter…of making her come.
But then Irena’s stomach growls, reminding me it’s been hours since our last meal.
She goes from pink to red and clasps a hand over her stomach. Mortification is written all over her pretty face.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she exclaims.
“Why? Because your stomach growled?” I’m honestly mystified at her embarrassment. The rules of her Court must be extremely strict.
“Well…yes. It’s rude,” she says.
“It’s not like you can control it,” I point out. “It just means you’re hungry. Loosen up, Princess. I’m hungry too, so let’s find a place to camp for the night and get something to eat.”
She looks like she wants to protest, but in the end, she follows me as I search for the perfect campsite—far enough to be hidden from the inn but not too close to the edge of Thornmere.
26
IRENA
I follow Valen and it feels like we’re going around in circles for a while but at last he finds a little clearing hidden by a stand of trees. The trees are much shorter than the ones in the forest—which is to our backs—and they hide us from sight of The Slaughtered Lamb, which isn’t that far away.
