“Your mother and her goons kidnapped me! Tortured me. Your mother?—”
“You don’t know that my mother was involved in any of that, godsdammit.”
“Really?” I glower. “Then why else was she there that night? Come on, Valen…”
“I made a deal, and I keep my promises. I’ll take you to your husband. And then I’ll go my own way.” He’s silent for a few long moments, looking down at his bloodied hands. “I got us some dinner. Rest. I’ll wash myself, and then I’ll see how to make it palatable for a princess.”
“I’m not?—”
“Godsdammit, I said, don’t test me right now.” He rises to his feet. “And stay where I can see you, or I won’t be held responsible if a wildcat gets you and your journey ends here.”
Properly chastised and honestly way too dizzy and exhausted to attempt another escape, I sit and watch him wash his hands and forearms, crouched at the creek, the water soaking his bare feet and through the hems of his pants. He’s bare-chested, and I don’t know what he has done with his shirt, nor do I want to ask. I don’t want to talk to him at all right now.
As much as it annoys me, I need him. And I owe him.
It guts me. The wolves owe me; that was the one thing clear in my mind all these years. To find myself indebted to one of them, indeed, the son of the monsters who took me… It’s unbearable.
And all the while I’m watching, mesmerized, the perfectly cut muscles of his back, shifting and bunching as he rubs the blood off his hands with handfuls of sand from the bottom of the creek, the magnificent breadth of his shoulders and those bulging biceps. He’s just so… male. So strong and large and formidable,and his face has just the right amount of prettiness to make my heart race.
He takes my breath away.
Not a good thing, seeing as I need to catch my breath and regain my energy.The Hunt for my Lost Breath.That might as well be the title of a philosophical work in which I question my life’s choices.
A soft snort escapes me, and his gaze instantly cuts to me.
“Something funny?” he rasps, getting up.
I shake my head, biting my lower lip. “I just thought of something.”
“A secret?”
“No, it’s not a secret. I just can’t believe I’m out here, at your mercy?—”
His lips peel back. “Like I was at yours, until today?”
“It’s not the same.”
“Keep telling yourself that, Princess.”
I huff. “Come on, Valen. You’re?—”
“A beast, I know. You’ve said.”
“That’s not what I had meant to say.”
“Then what? That I deserve what happened to me because of my nature? Deserved to be muzzled and tied up, thrown into a cage, then collared with a leash?” He fingers the collar still strapped around his neck. “Left to go thirsty and hungry? Have bones for supper?”
I look away, uneasy, feeling sick to my stomach. “No.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” he says eventually.
“Wasn’t it?”
He runs a hand through his shaggy hair. “Can you walk?”
“Yeah.” I’m glad for the change of topic. “I think so.”
“Come on, then. We should camp for the night. I wasn’t joking about the wildcats.”
