For a moment, he seemed to be falling into my trance, his black eyes widening with awe and wonder as my skin glowed beneath my dress.
“You are more than a mouthful,” he croaked and grinned, revealing rows of sharp, black teeth, leaning his antlered head forward. “So bright. So sweet.”
He was going to eat me?
Panic took hold. I kicked out with my legs, pummeling his body with my booted feet. He grunted but held me firm.
Suddenly, there was a fierce roar and we were thrown sideways. The dryad let me go and I tumbled to the ground. Snaps and snarls and the cracking of branches was all I heard.I could barely make out the muscular figure of Redvyr wrestling with the long-limbed dryad.
They rolled toward the mouth of the cave into the halo of firelight. Redvyr snarled and opened his mouth on the dryad’s throat. A shrieking cry pierced the night followed by silence as the beast fae ripped the dryad’s head from its body with his mouth.
The beast fae stood, lifting the severed head by the antlers. With a great roar, he threw the head into the ravine far below. The crash of it landing in the brush was all that could be heard before he bent and broke the limbs from its body, tossing them over the cliff as well.
He was in a frenzy of fury, roaring as he cracked and ripped the dryad into pieces.
“Redvyr,” I called, approaching hesitantly.
He didn’t hear me, still breaking the body of the stag dryad like he might come back to life and challenge the beast fae.
“Redvyr!” I cried louder.
He snapped his head with a ferocious growl in my direction, his teeth dripping green blood.
“He’s gone,” I said, raising my hands in a disarming gesture.
Redvyr continued to growl as he crouched over what was left of the dryad, a look of feral wildness in his eyes, shining bright as the sun. His muscles were bunched, ready to pounce.
“Easy,” I soothed, intuitively knowing he couldn’t come out of this frenzy so quickly. “You’ve killed him. There is no threat.”
His lip curled up at my approach, further revealing his long, sharpened canines. He was indeed a fierce monster, but I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. Something compelled me to ease his temper, his rage. After all, he’d fallen into this state to save me. Yet again, he had saved me.
“It’s alright,” I said softly, drawing so close now, I could smell the wild, masculine scent of him.
His tail lashed back and forth, his pointed ears laid back, a posture of aggression. If I was smart, I would simply cower in the cave and hide under my barga fur. But I couldn’t. Somehow, I knew he needed me.
“I’m safe now,” I assured him. “We’re both safe. The threat is gone.” Reaching out a hand toward his shoulder, fingers trembling, I added, “You’ve killed him.”
Crouched low, his shoulder was chest-high to me. When my fingertips touched the tight muscles of his shoulder, he snarled again, but he didn’t move. My own poisonous claws and fangs had retreated, but there was still a faint glow to my skin, which he was staring at keenly.
“Thank you for saving me,” I said in a soothing voice, caressing his shoulder.
He huffed a breath, his growl rumbling more into a purr rather than that menacing vibration that warned me he might bite my hand off from a moment before.
“I’m alright now. He’s gone,” I assured him again.
Redvyr dropped his head between his shoulders, still crouching over the body and making that deep purring sound as I swept my palm up his shoulder to the base of his neck and back down.
“See. All is well.”
He breathed great gulps of air until finally his breathing evened out and he was no longer snarling or purring or making any sound at all. When he lifted his head, his feral expression softened back into the beast fae I’d journeyed with all day. He stood to his full height, my hand falling away.
He turned his face toward the darkness, his face tight with anger though not the wild rage from before.
“Are you alright?”
“Go inside,” he said curtly.
I flinched. “I have to…relieve myself first.”
