Page 115 of Edge of the Wild

He’d removed his helmet, and the purple painted stripe across his eyes looked black in the darkness – the only colorful thing about his face. Like all Sels, he bore the milk-pale skin and ash-blond hair that marked centuries of selective breeding – or inbreeding, to be more accurate. His eyes were a colorless gray, and his sharply-pointed chin was clean-shaven. He wore his hair in the classic military style of Seles: a single braid pulled so tight it tugged at the skin around his eyes, pinned up in a coil at the back of his head. He was tall – she could tell that even sitting – and even though his armor made his shoulders seem wider than they were…they were still plenty wide.

Amelia took small, stupid pride in the fact that she didn’t shrink away from him, at least not physically.

“Drake,” he said, in her language. “You are the last Drake, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” she lied, because if they didn’t know about Tessa or Oliver, she wasn’t going to enlighten them. It was a gamble – a gamble that even the Sels weren’t interested in destroying the “last” of anything.

He frowned. “You are a girl.” It was said with obvious contempt.

“Yes, well, seeing as how you killed my father, uncle, and brother, I’m all that’s left.”

She saw the flash of firelight on gold, and knew what was happening the moment before he slapped her.

Hard.

Her head snapped to the side, the blow ringing through her skull, the pain bright and hot on her cheek. But he wasn’t wearing gauntlets, and he’d kept his hand open. It could have been worse.

Then Malcolm shouted, “Hey!”

No. Mal, please, no.

She’d bitten her lip, and she spat blood before she dragged her head back around.

Mal said, “You’d hit a woman? You poxy whoreson. Fuck you! Don’t you dare touch her!”

She met the captain’s gaze – and he leaned down, and gripped her chin in one large hand; his fingertips dug into her freshly-stung cheek and she fought to contain a whimper. She gritted her teeth, and didn’t resist when he tipped her head back another fraction, his colorless, purple-painted eyes boring down into hers. “I hit you. Once.” The unspoken threat was that he wouldn’t bother with so light a punishment again.

She gritted out, “Understood.”

“Did you not hear me, fucker?” Malcolm bellowed. “Let go of her! Lia!”

Connor whispered, “He needs to be quiet.”

“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” Amelia said, tone contrite, now. “Please ignore my man. He’s of no consequence.”

The captain stared at her a long moment. “Is he not?”

Alarm bells clanged in her mind. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

She heard Thomas say, “Hush, Mal. Be quiet.”

The captain’s gaze narrowed. He didn’t blink – hadn’t blinked, and she wondered if maybe the Sels’ eyes didn’t get dry like normal people’s. “You are the last Drake alive.”

“Yes.”

“Have you sons?”

“No. I’m not married.”

His gaze cut briefly toward Connor. “You are in alliance with the Dales?”

“No. He took me prisoner, actually, me and my men. We were hunting them. They’ve been raiding sheep pens in Drakewell.”

“This man is a coward and an outlaw.”

“Yes.” She swallowed, throat sticking, and noted the way his gaze dropped to her throat, to the throbbing pulse that much be visible there. “He is. A splotch on his family’s record.”

“But not you?” The gaze dropped lower; his lip curled up into a sneer, and there was little difference between the white of his teeth and the white of his lip. “You dress like a man.”

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