So he was either dead or possibly dying, and she couldn’t help him.
Tor unbound her wrists regularly—to keep her from being permanently damaged, maybe—but he watched her closely.
She wasn’t altogether resentful of that. It prevented her from finding any opportunity to escape even when her head finally cleared and quit throbbing so hard she felt like she would puke.
But it also prevented that bastard he called Puz from doing anything she would deeply regret.
She didn’t like the way he looked at her. It unnerved her enough she finally spoke to Tor about it even though she’d avoided looking or speaking directly to him. “You don’t trust him, do you?” she murmured when Puz disappeared into the forest, presumably to find wood for a fire.
Tor flicked a glance at her, but she couldn’t actually tell anything about his expression. He studied her for a long moment. “You tink I truss you?”
Annika felt her face redden and then the blood rushed away when she realized he wasn’t looking her over dispassionately at all. There was the distinct gleam of sexual interest in his eyes.
Men! Good god! No matter the species, fucking was always on their minds!
She shrugged off-handedly with an effort. “I don’t like you much, but I hate his guts. I don’t like the way he looks at me. And you beat the fuck out of him. You don’t really think he isn’t looking for a chance to repay you, do you? Or that he hasn’t considered not sharing the reward?”
He flicked a glance in the direction that Puz had disappeared, stared at the woods thoughtfully for several moments, and finally got up.
Annika’s heart nearly beat its way out of her chest and up her throat as he approached her. He crouched in front of her, met her gaze for a long, long moment and finally caught her wrists and bound them together again. When he rose, he hauled her to her feet, then swept her up into his brawny arms and carried her from the cleared area. After settling her in the high brush, he pulled another strip of leather from his pouch and bound her ankles as he had her wrists. He put a hand over her mouth warningly. “Shut mouth. No sound,” he growled when he’d finished.
Annika stared at him wide eyed, wondering if he was waiting for her to acknowledge the order or if it would be better just to obey.
He rose after a few moments, to her relief, and left.
Annika’s heart was still pounding unpleasantly fast—so rapidly her brain was pure mush and she couldn’t gather her wits to her. She struggled onto her knees and managed to straighten enough to peer back toward the camp area just in time to see Puz race back from the woods with a battle cry, his club raised to kill.
She didn’t credit her warning as the catalyst for the battle or for giving Tor the chance to defend himself. She thought the warning had probably done no more than supported Tor’s own beliefs and that she’d sensed the moment Puz made an excuse to leave that he was up to no good.
Maybe Tor had, too.
Whatever the case, Tor wasn’t actually ready for the attack, but he’d removed her from harm’s way and he also wasn’t caught completely off guard. He’d managed to collect his own weapon and met the blow Puz swung at him with a counter blow.
Paralyzed for several moments by the extreme violence she was witnessing—something she had never actually seen before in reality—it wasn’t until Tor nearly got his head bashed in that self-preservation kicked in and Annika thought about trying to free herself and run while she had the chance.
Dropping onto her butt again, she drew her knees up and began working frantically at the binding around her ankles. Fortunately for her, it wasn’t something that required a lot of thought or intelligence—because she didn’t actually have access to more than two percent of her brain function at that moment. It occurred to her fairly quickly, though, that she might not run well with her hands bound together, but she damned well couldn’t run at all with her ankles tied together!
She’d just reached the point where she felt like screaming with frustration when a dark shadow abruptly fell across her. Joy shot through Annika instantly and she whipped a look upward, gasping, “Zhor!”
It was most definitely not Zhor dropping from the sky to rescue her, however.
But itwassomething huge!
She screamed like a banshee when she caught a glimpse of the monstrous bat-like wings as they rushed towards her.
