Page 14 of The Warrior's Captive

“There’s no cage for us. Only death. I’m not holding you captive. I’m trying to keep you alive.”

“Hiding and running isn’t living.”

“We need time. I need time to think.” What he needed was a plan, and so far, he hadn’t come up with much of anything except the barely defined notion that if he held onto Briar May, he could still use her as some sort of bargaining chip for both their lives.

“What if there’s already a war over us and we’re not even aware that it’s happening?” That hit him like a blow. He hadn’t even considered it.

Her face gentled. “We need to go back to my pack,” she insisted. It sounded more like she was begging him, and when he imagined her doing it on her knees, it was almost more than he could bear.

“We do that and I’m as good as dead.” He needed to get the hell off her. Being in such close proximity wasn’t helping him think. All the blood was leaving his brain and heading straight to the wrong parts. He wanted to take her right now, mark her, own her. Fuck, what was she doing to him? He didn’t operate like that, he’d never take a woman by force. His little wolf was safe with him—if anything, it was himself he was worried about in this set up. He’d never felt so close to losing himself as he did right now.

Briar May was dangerous. She made him less of a weapon when he needed to stay sharp and deadly for the both of them.

He rolled off and yanked her up to her feet. She glared at him as she brushed grass off her dress and out of her hair.

“They can help,” she insisted after a beat, still finger-combing plant debris out of the long cornsilk strands.

Strands that looked so soft he wanted to take them between his fingers and savor the feel before wrapping it around his fist to pull her head back and—

“I can make them understand.” She was completely oblivious to his dark thoughts.

“Understand what?” He wished he was oblivious as well. This was the wrong time to be in the wrong sphere, to become a man he didn’t recognize, to have a body that refused to obey his every will and command. To start feeling something. “If we’re found by my pack, they’ll say we colluded together. Some plot to take down my alpha. They’ll say it’s been going on for a long time, maybe they’ll accuse my brother of starting it all when he left to run with the Rangers. Snares and traps. That’s their way of reasoning. I won’t be given a chance to prove that I was always loyal.”

“But that’s ridiculous!” He didn’t like that fine sheen of moisture in her eyes. Didn’t like that she felt things for him just when he was numbing himself out again.

“You don’t know my pack. Our alpha doesn’t want war, but we are warriors through and through. Peace never lasts, the ones who want a fight will overrule the ones who don’t. The majority will have no qualms about installing an alpha who will give them what they want.”

She looked truly sickened. “What kind of a life is that?”

He lifted his shoulders in an uncaring shrug. “The only one we know.” That was the truth. And it was his pack’s truth and his truth. It had been his since birth. He didn’t know any other way to live.”

Her eyes searched him, and he didn’t like what he saw flash across her face. Anger. Tenderness. Resignation. She looked up at him, “Fate has clearly decided something for us.”

“I don’t believe in fate. What happens to us is written by our own hand.”

She looked like she was about to protest, but when she opened her mouth, their attention was drawn to the distant woods by the call of a raven. The sharp cry pierced the sky, the golden sunlight slanting down and bathing the entire world in its glory.

An alarmed cry was quickly hushed by a hand pressed firmly over her mouth. He didn’t believe in portents. Birds were just birds. Nature was just nature. The world moved on, full of mystery beyond their understanding, but life or death? That came down to a person’s own choices and their own skill.

“Do you have the sight?” He wasn’t sure why he said it. He didn’t believe in the old stories.

“No.” Her hand fell away from her mouth, fluttering at her throat. “I have nothing at all. I am nothing at all.”

He wanted to surge forward, to take her arms and shake her, to make her recant those words. The sensation was so deep and vital inside him that his lungs had trouble expanding. He felt like he’d just been gutted a second time. He wasn’t going to stand there and be the kind of man who held her and stroked her hair and promised her that everything would be alright. He would never be that man. That man died when his mother did, bleeding out right in front of his eyes.

“We need to leave.” That’s the man he was. Hard. Practical. The kind of man who knew how to stay alive. The kind of man who took life from others. “Now.” They’d wasted enough time already.

“You’re not well enough.”

“Believe me,” he snorted, “I’ve been in much worse shape and lived. Unfortunately for you. But then, they would have sent someone else. Someone who wasn’t me. If it had to be anyone, you’re lucky it was me.”

“And if it had to be anyone,” she swore with force, thumping her chest above her heart, “I’m glad it was me too.”

“You’d sacrifice yourself for your pack?”

She seemed annoyed by his tone of disbelief. “Wouldn’t you?”

“Yes.” But out of duty and obligation. Because that was a warrior’s death. She’d do it out of love.

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