Ru, Fauna and I walk through the bent metal gates heading straight for the back entrance. Ru hasn’t let go of Fauna since he got her back and I can’t blame him. I don’t think I’d be able to let my girl go either.
As soon as they step through the back double doors a chorus of female voices start talking so frantically I can’t keep up with what they are saying. Their concern is clear and I pause in the entryway allowing them to have a moment together.
From the little information I got out of Ru and Vish, these women sound like they’ve been through enough without some big stranger barging in and scaring them some more.
I know how the world is now and why we need to be gentle when meeting new people and groups. They don’t know us and we don’t know them. Although Ru and Vish seem to know more than me.
Slow to move inside, I keep my movements as gentle and non-threatening as I possibly can. Ru has been inside with them before and Vish is somewhere around here but none of them have ever met me. But the sound of a familiar feminine voice has my ears perking and immediately I scan the women crowding the corridor.
Then my heart stops.
She’s here.
My girl.
“Princess?”
Chapter six
Liam
Thud. My heart beat returns with a boom as I take in the green-eyed beauty and all her magnificence.
She’s here. My girl, my heart.
All of the commotion must have my mind playing tricks on me because there is no way that my beautiful girl is standing up ahead, right next to my two best friends.
‘Princess?’ I breathe out, feeling like I am having an out-of-body experience as I get a closer look at the woman who has stolen my soul.
Angry purple bruises frame her emerald green eyes and the swelling of them makes my knees want to buckle. Her sweet noseis as swollen as the rest of her features and a smear of blood stains her upper lip red.
If I hadn’t already watch all of those fuckers that attacked her die screaming I’d go back and do it myself.
‘Please tell me I’m not dreaming,’ my legs moving me forward as shock continues to flood my system.
But she does not respond, stumbling over her words as her eyes roam my body, glued to the features of my face.
‘It’s me. You remember, right?’
I’m an idiot, how would she recognise me without my mask? For what little time we had together she had suggested we keep things impersonal and because I was mesmerised by her the second I laid eyes on her I had stupidly agreed.
I had never taken my mask off and she’d never told me her name, only allowing me to settle on calling her princess. It had started off ironically but since? The way I’ve worshipped her memory… there’s a lot more to that title now.
The black lycra of my mask stretches as I pull it over my face, adjusting the white plastic of the full skull on the front and the crown that sits half-heartedly on top.
Her beautiful green eyes widen despite the swelling surrounding them as recognition takes over her. I see it in the way she is now looking at me.
‘Remember me now, princess?’
Angry voices threaten to speak over her but I only have attention for her, the woman of my dreams. It’s like we can silently communicate with each other, like that is what we have been doing all of these months. All of the time we have had apart we have just been waiting out the winter months to come back to one another. This time in my city, a place I know that I can keep her safe.
A place where I can give her a home.
The leader of my group, Ruaridh, waves his hand in my face, bringing me out of my thoughts.
‘It’s her, Ru. The woman I told you about.’
With my mask back in my hand I quickly explain who she is, that she is the woman I told him about meeting all those months ago, the one I have not been able to rest until I have found.
