Page 50 of Settle Down, Princess

The men all moved, but I was only conscious of those nearest me. Of a rope going through the loop around my wrists, then how it was used to haul my hands up high above my head. When I looked up, I saw it was attached to a rusted bracket, set into an overhanging section of the cave well. I was tied in place, the balls of my feet barely touching the ground as the bandit settled in behind me, his position a mockery of a more intimate connection. The leader, the man I’d been prepared to pay good gold to help me, pressed the knife to my neck, making me take shallow breaths for fear of doing his work for him, and then he waited.

It didn’t take long. A horn sounded, but the blast was cut off before the wet sound of a throat being torn heralded the fact that Creed had found the cave.

“Get ready to fight, you bastards!” the leader barked. “You’re in this just as deep as I am, and the only way through it is to stick together.” Men drew swords, but their agitation was clear in the way they moved from foot to foot and flicked their eyes back and forth, trying search the shadows. “Hold your ground! Hold your fucking ground!”

Perhaps a coordinated display of martial prowess would’ve helped in some other situation but not this one. A beast had found the cave, but he wasn’t about to make it his home. It was going to be their graveyard.

Creed was in wolf-man form, halfway between a wolf and a man, with all the power of one and the superior instincts of the other. Death incarnate, in other words. He growled my name, a prayer to the battle gods,

“Jessalyn…” Then he took a step towards us.

The knife pressed harder against my neck.

“Don’t take another step,” the bandit leader ordered. “Not another fucking step. I’ll have her bleeding out on the stones quicker than you can take another breath if you do.”

“Oh, for that…” Creed’s wolf’s eyes glowed like lamplights in the dark, so it was easy to see as he trailed them down my neck and how they narrowed when he saw the knife blade. “…I’ll have to kill all of you.”

“But not before I kill her!” The bandit leader’s voice sounded shrill with fear, and I could hear the harsh sound of his breath in and out, faster and faster. “She’ll be dead…”

His threat trailed away as he watched Creed move.

I couldn’t take in all the chaos Creed wrought. He moved too fast; here in one blink of an eye, there in the next. I forced my eyes to stay open so I could witness every moment as he plunged the same clawed hands that had caressed me so softly into the stomach of one man, then another, leaving their guts to spill on the ground before they could even raise their swords.

The remaining bandits blinked, unable to believe what they were seeing, but I didn’t have that problem. I stared with a small smile on my face. I didn’t fear Creed’s ferocity because I had the conviction that he would always deploy it on my behalf, never against me. And he did, wrenching swords from shaking grips and then throwing them point first so they ended up embedding themselves in the chests of the bandits.

“You’re not having all the fun, are you?”

Silas prowled into the cave, seemingly casually, a knife in either hand. One man rushed forward, thinking Silas was the weaker link, only to end up with a knife embedded in his eye socket. Those green eyes followed his enemy’s fall to the ground with cool disinterest.

“You fucking tied her up?” Roan prowled forward with all the catlike menace of a lion, his brows jerking down. “You gutless prick.”

“I’ll kill her!”

He pressed the tip of the blade harder against my neck. As I breathed more frantically, I felt the point nick my skin followed by the sensation of a single drop of blood sliding down my throat.

“Now you’ve done it.”

Arik tried for his usual tone of mocking disinterest, but as he spun his sword in his hand before gripping it firmly, they all moved as one. Knives flew, swords cut through the air in massive arcs and blood, so much blood, fountained before me. I should’ve been repelled by it all, but, curiously, my breathing calmed and my stomach settled.

“Seems like the best thing to do right now would be to run,” I told my captor.

“Not while I have you.” All the cocky callousness was gone from the man’s voice now. “You’re my way out of here.”

“I’m your death,” I promised him.

“Close your eyes, Princess,” Arik warned as Creed got closer. “You don’t want to see him like this.”

But I did.

The knife was twisted away from my neck as the wrist of the hand holding it was broken. Then as the man screamed, he was hauled forward by the broken joint and sent slamming into the wall.

“Don’t break him too soon,” Roan said, with a grin, stepping forward and stabbing his sword into the cave wall to the bandit leader’s left, then to his right, when he tried to make a run for it.

“He took Jessalyn!” Creed roared, still in his wolf-man form.

“We know.” Silas appeared at his shoulder. “That’s why this has to hurt him.” He stared at my former captor, and a cruel smile formed on his lips. “You could’ve whisked away any other girl. Any one other than the one who belongs to us.”

Belongs to us…? That’s what my brain focused on and played over and over in my head, not the violent murder of my captor. He kept trying to get free, so Silas stabbed knives into both his wrists, then his ankles, to make clear what a mistake that was.

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