Page 42 of Tethered In Blood

A slow, dark, heat knotted in my gut.

“The way she looked when Valdier had her by the jaw?” A low whistle pierced the tavern’s murmur. “I bet she’s feisty in bed.”

The world narrowed.

He what?

My mind went blank, then burned. One of them had touched her, and I hadn’t noticed.

I should have been more aware.

She should have informed me.

My thoughts clawed through every moment and every interaction.Did she flinch? Did her voice waver? Had I missed the signs?

I had pushed her, taunted her, and questioned her intentions. I hadn’t seen it. I hadn’t thought, even for a moment, that one of them might have touched her.

It pissed me off.

She had healed them, walked into their quarters alone, tended to their wounds, and hadn’t considered the danger. The thought never crossed my mind. My suspicions had occupied my thoughts, my damn arrogance had blinded me, and those bastards were laughing. They didn’t even realize how close they were to losing their teeth.

Why did it eat at me?

Because I knew what could have happened.

Or what already had.

She had recklessly walked into a chamber filled with knights, unaware of the weight of her vulnerability.Did she think they honored an unspoken code of decency? That men, hardened by war and raised in violence, saw her as more than an opportunity?

It was too vivid: the shift in their stance, the way they closed in, testing her nerves, hands brushing too closely under the guise of jest, one of them reaching, gripping, and the startled intake of her breath. A glance passed between them, unspoken but understood.

How far did it go?

The sickening thought burrowed, slithered, and spread in my mind.

She hadn’t mentioned it, hadn’t even hinted at it. But that didn’t mean it hadn’t happened.

Fuck.

My jaw popped.

Forcing my fingers to relax, I drove the knife into my meal, slicing through the meat with deliberate precision. One wrong move, one slip, and I would lose control. I couldn’t make a scene here, but if he had done more, if any of them had, there wouldn’t be enough left of them to bury. The slow burn of my drink did little to dull the sharpness of my thoughts.

One of them laughed. “She’s got them big, pretty eyes, y’know? The kind that look up at ya all soft—”

“—or wild,” another chuckled. A violent heat gripped my spine. My fingers curled against the table, nails pressing into the wood.

I was going to fucking kill them.

“Healer’s hands are always nice. But hers? Soft. Even with all that work she does.”

“Did ya’ see how small her wrists are? Could pro’lly wrap a whole hand around ‘em.”

“Bet she likes that.”

A new surge of anger ignited within me and settled deeply in my bones. The tavern blurred, and voices twisted into static against the throbbing in my skull.

“Not sure what the fuss is about,” one of them scoffed. “She’d be pretty if it weren’t for her face looking like a dirty canvas.” I rolled my knife methodically between my fingers, my pulse steady but loud. My body knew better than to react too soon, but I was dancing on the thin line of self-control.

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