Page 51 of Stormbinder King
“Now, no sulking sweetheart,” he said, dropping a kiss on my feverish face. “I’m not angry with you, Andromeda. Your needy little body pleases me. Just be a good girl and everything will be fine.”
15
One day turned into the next.
The stifling heat of the summer turned into the cool snap of fall, and then the chill blanket of winter as I existed in this frozen purgatory.
Winter was gray and bleak, the forest looking skeletal and fearsome with the heavy wet leaves all gone, the drifting snow doing nothing to soften my hopelessness.
I clawed through each day, despair and impotent rage punctuated by my desperate need for Jack.
Whether I delayed it or put it off, the end result was the same: whimpering weak submission to Jack, desperate primal need for his cock.
Sometimes he took me fast and hard and sometimes he made me crawl to him, in front of the whole Pack, so everyone could see how I was driven by my desire for him.
He was all cleverness and wit and lazy affection again, only a glint in his eye now and again showing how much he enjoyed the pain he was causing his brother.
He took other women openly now, in front of me at the dinner table sometimes, as I choked my food down underAurelia’s triumphant eyes and the wet sound of Jack’s cock in another woman’s cunt echoed in my ears.
How had Jack faked a fated mate bond?
The answer must lie in my protective tattoo somehow, but it was another problem I didn’t know how to solve.
Then one day when the winter seemed old and stubborn, like the bone-deep chill would never leave, Jack and Symeon’s uncle Solomon arrived on my front doorstep.
“Come with me,” he said.
“Why?” I asked dully. “To do what?”
“Get up,” he said, raising one of his shaggy brows to me.
I don’t know why I obeyed.
All I wanted was to die, to sit here in this dark corner of the room and rot until I sunk into the ground and became part of the deep underbelly of the forest.
But I followed him all the way to the clearing outside town where the Pack had held the Midsummer Festival, and he handed me a little dagger.
It was shorter than the ones I’d seen other shifters carry, not that they ever needed one in their shifted states, but very beautiful, with a carved wooden handle.
“Don’t touch the blade, you little fool,” Solomon said. “It’s sharp. Now hold the handle and straighten your back.”
But there was no venom in his tone, and I obeyed.
We worked for over an hour together on the very basics of using it, and he came back the next day to get me.
Then Solomon and I were working together almost every day as he taught me the basics of short dagger and knife fighting.
It was better than doing nothing and knowing nothing.
He was a taciturn man, but he was patient.
I wasn’t very good, but I didn’t stop.
One week passed. Then the next. And then Solomon didn’t have to come get me anymore. I would be there waiting for him.Knife and dagger work, then a long staff. And then one day it was almost warm and I was doing my exercises as Solomon worked on fashioning a lightweight enough bow for me to practice archery.
I felt almost relaxed and happy, the brisk wind whipping my skirt around my body.
I felt stronger too, my feet faster.
