Page 57 of Tethered In Blood

Or what Ihadn’tdone to protect her.

I wasn’t meant for this. I wasn’t built to protect anyone. I was a predator, a murderer, a torturer.

Her fingertips grazed my shoulder, featherlight, tracing the line where the stitches had once been. I went rigid at the touch.

Soft.

So damned soft.

“It shouldn’t have healed that fast,” she murmured, frowning. “That’s not humanly possible.”

“Well, I’m not human.” The words came out clipped and harsher than I intended. I wasn’t angry with her; it made sense that she felt confused. I loathed how she made me feel. She stirred my Fae instincts, a part of me I had forced into dormancy, awakening them with her mere presence.

‘The herbalist must bleed.’

The words crept through my mind. My jaw tightened again as the memory surfaced—the beast in Silverfel lunging for her, its gnarled roots snapping, and the way my vision had tunneled. My instincts took control before I considered a response. It was pure reaction, pure rage, pure possession.

I hated she made me care enough to follow it.

Her brows knitted together, and her body became tense.

Good. She should be wary of me. She should keep her distance like everyone else. It was safer that way.

Except… she didn’t.

Her familiar, forced smile reappeared, a feeble attempt to dissipate the heavy, charged silence between us. She made a light, meaningless joke, yet the words fell flat. My thoughts tangled with the sensation of her presence being too close, too warm, too overwhelming.

Her hands found purchase on my jaw as she stood, her gentle fingers cool against my heated skin. She tilted my face toward the firelight, her lips parting as she assessed the damage. I should have pulled away. There were a few scrapes that would heal by morning. I didn’t need her fussing over them.

The bandage wrapped around her palm brushed against my skin, causing a dark sensation to curl deep in my chest. The memory of her slicing her palm open without hesitation, blood welling crimson against pale skin, resurfaced. My anger wound and unraveled inside me.

She trembled in her sleep. Her voice sounded fragile and broken as she begged someone to stop. I shook her arm to wake her from whatever horror had gripped her in rest. Her eyes glistened when she realized I had re-bandaged her hand. The heat of her body against mine, the way she tensed but didn’t pull away as my hands covered hers on the reins, and I steadied her when fear threatened to overwhelm her. Yet she stood before me, touching me as though I were the one who required care.

I swallowed hard, my throat as dry as sand. I should have moved or done something, but her face held me captive. The firelight flickered across her skin, painting gold along her cheekbones and tracing the curve of her parted lips. She wiped the blood from my cheek with careful fingers, gentle despite the faint tremor in her hands.

She said something—another joke, another desperate attempt to shatter whatever new tension had rooted itself between us. She met my gaze and faltered. A sharp current surged through my spine, searing hot in my gut, as color bloomed high on her cheeks, deepening into a warm breathlessness. She looked as though I had caught her doing something she shouldn’t have.

‘You’re beautiful.’

The words acted like a slow-burning ember, smoldering beneath my skin. A low, simmering irritation coiled in my gut, tightening with every breath and replacing the energy that had flowed through me. Shewasbeautiful, bewitching in a way that defied reason. But that hadn’t been what irritated me. It was the way she blushed, how another man’s words had captured that reaction from her, causing her skin to flush with a delicate shade of pink.

Why did that bother me?

She wasn’t mine.

The thought hit hard, a harsh truth that should have been comforting. Yet something within me growled in protest- a deep, primal instinct I had spent my whole life suppressing.

Mine.

No.

Shecouldnever be mine. Shewouldnever be mine.

The laws prohibited Fae from loving humans. They were obsessed with their flawless, untainted lineages. That was why they abandoned me; I became a mistake, a blemish they wanted to forget.

So, what triggered such a visceral reaction from it?

From me?

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