Page 12 of The Warrior's Captive

She had the insane urge to lean over his chiseled, frightful face and smack him. She leaned over and raised her hand, but then she let it fall. This man might have the face of death brought to life, but he was also frighteningly beautiful. She was only afraid to look at him because it stirred things inside of her that were all wrong. Painfully and horribly wrong.

She reached for the tiny pair of scissors in the kit and snipped the thread. She moved the needle and wondered about the ointment in the bag. She decided to forgo it and instead placed a few sterile patches over the strip of stitches. Luckily shifters weren’t as susceptible to infection as humans, so as long as the stitches held, and the wound stopped bleeding he should be okay. Only a thin line of blood seeped through the line of sutures. She watched for a few minutes, and nothing more came. The bleeding had stopped.

She finally took a breath, noting that it was the first full one she’d allowed herself throughout the entire awful procedure. She needed this man to keep her alive. She had no clue where they even were. He could have lied to her when he said Kansas. Even if he hadn’t, that might as well be the moon.

Now that a man wasn’t bleeding out in front of her and the emotion from the kidnapping and the drugging, the shock and danger of the whole thing was wearing thin, what Hades said about his brother finally hit home. She stared at his chest, rising and falling evenly, those two warriors inked there alive with his breaths.

Alive there on his skin, etched over powerfully carved muscle, alive in his memory, but no longer in the world.

There was only one warrior left.

She’d asked him how he was even alive, and she’d meant it. That kind of wound should have been mortal. That he’d carried it with him for a day or more only proved how tough he was. It proved what kind of a will to live he had. He also had some kind of luck that nothing vital had been hit. Maybe it was skill. Maybe he knew how to move, how to dodge, how to protect himself, how to take a death blow without it being fatal.

Maybe he wasn’t mortal at all, unlike the ink on his chest suggested.

Before she could stop herself, Briar May found her hand trembling over his chest, stopping short of actually touching him. She let her palm hover right above where his heart would be, still beating steadily, and instead curled it into a fist and brought it to her mouth.

She wanted to hate him, he was her captor after all. Yet she couldn’t.

She knew nothing about him, but it felt as if her traitorous body had claimed him.

She faced the window, stared longingly at the field. Somewhere beyond those tall, wavering grasses were her brothers and sisters. Her parents. Rome, who had started all of this the night he’d killed those Rangers. He’d taken his vengeance and now they’d come full circle, and she was here. Would she make it out alive to see any of her family again?

Did this man have anyone left?

Maybe the one person in the world who loved him, who meant anything to him, was now gone. Stolen from him, his blood and the ash of his remains soaked into their pack lands.

She bit down hard on her fist to stifle the wail of agony that tore from her throat.

Whatever cursed destiny had been set in motion that night months ago and that moment in the woods when she’d seen Hades and his men appear, they had to see it out.

Together.

Chapter 6

Castor

Briar May. A rose in spring. The memory of her, the scent of summer strawberries, the sweetness of a potent sugar on his tongue. She looked so soft, but underneath she was like a diamond. Too hard to break. Deceptively sharp. He’d felt it in her kiss, he’d never lost control before, but something had made him want her with a ferocity he’d never known. She’d tasted of life to him, of hope and possibility.

After a lifetime of tucking it away and pretending that it wasn’t there, the pain, the hurt, the wounds that turned into jagged scars, it should have been easier to deprive himself of sleep, of healing, of the simple touch he’d craved for half a lifetime, but he’d reached the brink. The self-surgery combined with the lack of sleep, the stress, the overcharged adrenaline, and the blood loss was too much.

Castor hadn’t slept the deep, undisturbed sleep of the dead since he was a child, and even then, it was before his mother died. He could barely remember a time when he felt safe enough to be so unguarded.

He blinked, his lids heavy and gummy. Disbelief surged through him when he noted the pink and purple dawn creeping like a blood stain with bruised edges over the rim of the sky. The horizon was still gray and the tall grasses in the rolling green fields had yet to unbend their sleepy heads to face a new day.

His eyes swept the perimeter of the small room and when they landed on the door, the shit he’d piled up there to keep them safe all pulled to the side, just enough for a slight body to slip through, he shot to his feet.

His heart raced, warrior training kicking into gear—the little wolf had gone. He knew he shouldn’t have let his guard down. He’d been right yesterday, she had bewitched him, that stunt in the Jeep… What had she given him? Powered by adrenaline he managed to get himself upright.

His wound immediately protested the movement, as did the pounding in his temples. She must have drugged him, that would explain why he’d blacked out. He did an internal scan as he rushed to the door—but no, he hadn’t been drugged. Those hours of respite were because his body needed them to survive.

He didn’t put much faith or trust in anyone, and there was a reason for that. People didn’t respond the way they should. They didn’t use common sense. They didn’t stay in a damn safehouse, in a safe spot, with someone who could stand between life and death. Because that’s why he was keeping them here, did she not realize it was for her own good? If Apollo and Zeus were after them, her only chance of survival was if she stayed by his side. Damn it.

He threw the door wide open, wrenching an old steel bedframe, the junky stove, and the other debris, clean out of the way. He let out a bellow of rage into the hazy early morning light. He didn’t want to hear the way it crackled at the edges, his fear tainting it.

He’d ditched the car miles away, thrown out the keys along their journey here as he carried Briar May in his arms, his weapons and pack on his back, so he doubted she’d be able to locate both and take off. He’d have better luck tracking her in his wolf form, but it was almost dawn. Anyone could see him. A wolf with a pack strapped to his back and battle axes? Not so believable.

He cursed and stormed back inside the farmhouse, gathering up his blood-soaked t-shirt. He wasn’t gentle about putting it back on and his side screamed. He slapped a hand there, batting the wound like he could tell it to shut up, at least it had stopped bleeding, so he had to be thankful for small mercies. He breathed deeply, let it out slowly, stuffed all of his anger, the sharp knives of fear that bit into his soul, the ragged edges of something he couldn’t even name, the physical hurt, down into that deep pit inside himself. In a few seconds, he was back to his natural state. Unfeeling, cold, and robotic. He’d turned his body off. Turned everything off in his brain except the laser sharp focus he’d need to track Briar May. He methodically packed the black bag, zipped it shut, and threw it on. He slammed his axes in place.

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