Page 19 of Trapped By Vengeance

“What?!”

“Come with me!” Eloise rushes off before I can respond.

Since she’s not present to witness my unnatural speed, I rush to put on my cloak and pocket the comb I discarded since I was already kidnapped once without one.

I slide out of the cabin just as Eloise comes running out of hers, a pigeon perched on her shoulder. She’s pulling a bloated satchel over her shoulder that’s not harboring a fowl.

The chaos of men yelling and sabers swinging sounds very close.

“The dinghies are over here,” Eloise gasps, grabbing my arm and yanking me away from the sound of chaos.

“Where is your father?”

“Holding them off.” Eloise draws a tiny black dagger from a crudely made leather sheath.

I stare at it. “Is that . . . is that my dagger?”

Eloise blinks. “No, it’smydagger.”

Snatching it from her hand, I study it. Then I slip it into my garter sheath. It fits perfectly as it was custom designed to do. “You little scamp!”

“Prisoners don’t get daggers,” Eloise counters, yanking it out of my sheath. Then she uses it to slash a rope on the side of the ship. “We have to hurry—”

“Not without Konrad. And this conversation isn’t over.” Glaring, I run toward the chaos, calling back, “You leave, though— and don’t look back!”

“He can take care of himself!” Eloise yells at me.

Ignoring her, I slide around the cabins and see a dozen men surging toward Konrad. His back is to me, and he is wielding a saber in each hand, doing his best to keep the men in front of him, even though they keep trying to come around him. With the bloodlust I smell on these men, I know that if Konrad gets surrounded, he’s dead.

Well, it was nice having a secret while it lasted.

The saber Konrad was wielding in his left hand goes flying backward even as he disarms the man he’s fighting on the right.

Konrad’s saber slides to me, and I stop it with my foot.

I stoop to grip its hilt, but I’m momentarily distracted by the ferocity Konrad puts into his fight, countering multiple blades with his last saber. His golden hair flies dramatically behind him,as does the tail of his frock coat, which he then strips off, tossing back at me.

Catching it, I look up to find his gaze locked with mine instead of the men wielding the blades his saber is currently preventing from stabbing him.

“Run,” he growls at me as he grows before my eyes. Claws protrude from his fingers and tear through his shoes.

I clutch both the saber and his coat and, for once in my life, do what I’m told. Sliding back to where Eloise has her dinghy halfway lowered from the ship.

“You were right!” I yell, going to cut the ropes of the other dinghies. “He can certainly take care of himself!”

Konrad:

There are many reasons I hate becoming a wolf. One of them is that the transformation is quite painful. Another is that it is harder to think straight in animal form. A major reasonshouldbe that werwölfery is punishable by death, even though it wasn’t my choice to be made so.

However, my least favorite reason is that it is an unfortunate waste of good clothing.

But I’m down to one saber and zero other options.

Shrugging off my prized coat, I throw it back to spare it, and my gaze locks on Valda.

So, Eloise understood my instructions. But why is Valda here and not fleeing her captor now that she has the chance?

Well, she’s about to find out how truly frightening I can be.

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