Page 106 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion
A feral scream tore from my lips, jolting me back into now. Through my agony I found something inside me. Some wild strength as my nails painfully lengthened. The barest of claws but it was enough. Tearing through the flesh of his throat like paper, as that warm blood sprayed into my mouth. He screamed, rearing back but I surged forward. Fingers digging into meaty wet flesh as he gargled his own blood.
I screamed and screamed. Uncaring who was coming or the flashes of torches in the distance. Who was listening. I kept tearing at him until there was nothing but mulch between my fingers. Until my limbs weakened. As sound from the woods pierced thought my madness. Forcing me to scramble back. Knowing I needed to run. They were coming. They’d catch me.
I turned. Only to bolt into something hard and alive. I screamed again, trying to buck free but those arms don’t let me go. The soft fabric of their clothes, then the familiar rich sent of them penetrating my panic.
‘Alma.’ So soft. So authoritative. Settling that terror inside of me. Until I could drag in greedy gulps of air. Taunted by that fucking scent. A flash of amber in the darkness.
Thean. The comfort of their presence and the sharp scratch of their fangs against my jaw with how close they held me.
I turned further into that commanding hold, needing to see. Uncaring that I was naked as I knelt in that mud, illuminated by nothing but moonlight. My fingers curling into the fine fabric of their coat. Ruining it with my bloody claws.
Those amber eyes burnt with fury as they dragged over my face. My cheekbone throbbed from either the fall or the hunter, I didn’t know. They missed none of it. Dark rage seeping across their expression. Not appearing like any form of Thean I’d seen before.
‘I can’t change.’ The words came panted through my lips.
Then those amber eyes dropped to my thigh where I’d pulled the dart free. Their nose wrinkled as if they could smell it too.
I thought they’d say something. Mock me. Yet this creature before me was too quiet as they pulled their coat from their tall masculine frame and draped it around my shoulders, holding it closed as I slipped my trembling numb arms into the sleeves. Or tried to. My poor attempt at claws snagging on the fabric.
Movement came from the trees. Noises that Thean didn’t seem to hear. The close voices of those hunters making me flinch. I’d killed one. I turned to see him slumped in the mud, only for Thean to catch my chin, pulling my focus back to them.
My lip trembled and I hated it. Hated how their eyes caught it. How obvious my fear was. How easily I let myself slip back into the past.
Then there was nothing but the absence of them as they got to their feet, shadow blades appearing in their hands before they vanished. Vanished as if they’d never been there at all.
No. The warmth and scent of their coat told me they were. They’d simply become the creature I should have never forgotten they were.
One of the Countess’s assassins. A death their mark would never see coming.
Then there was nothing but screaming. Ruthless screaming.
I scrunched my eyes closed but forced myself to listen. They deserved it. All of them. For how they’d turned me into nothing but a shivering lump on the cold earth. I clawed at Thean’s coat, trying to drag their scent in. To find any comfort, but that scent was too weak in this mortal form. The smell of wet earth too strong. Like those graves in Daunton Wood. Then I felt that I was drowning merely trying to draw in breath.
A touch brushed my shoulder. I recoiled, kicking and hissing, only to find Thean peering down at me moments later. Shirt streaked with blood, that blade sheathed once again at their thigh. As they reached out to help me, like I was some lame foal.
Then I remembered who I was. My bitterness rising above my fears.
‘I don’t need your pity,’ I snapped.
‘I don’t have any pity in me, darling,’ they sighed and then they pulled me up into their arms so effortlessly. Leaving me no choice but to cling to them for fear of being dropped. For fear of falling once again.
‘I was carrying a sack. We need to find—’ I barely got the words out before the thing dropped against my middle, forcing me to clutch it despite how thickly it was coated in mud.
Kat had trusted me with it.
‘Cursed objects have a tendency to harbour bad luck, sweetheart,’ Thean warned, but their voice wasn’t as playful as I remembered. Their form too tense as if lost in thought.
Distant torchlight cut through the wood. The echo of voices reaching my ears and making me flinch. A commotionin the darkness from whatever chaos Thean had wrought. Just how many hunters they’d killed, I didn’t know. But their pace wasn’t urgent. In a blink of an eye the damp of the wood was gone, replaced by the warmth of one of the Blackthorn fires.
Transporting us so effortlessly, as effortlessly as they’d arrived. With me still not understanding how they’d been there or how we were here now as they deposited me gently on the chaise before the fire. The now muddy sack tumbling to land next to my feet.
I recoiled, trying to stand, but a firm hand on my shoulder kept me in place.
‘I’ll ruin the fabric,’ I snapped. Unable to stop shaking. Hating it.
‘I don’t care,’ they answered, with a gentle shove. I had no choice but to mar the cushions with my mud-covered limbs. Then I saw the blood on my hand. Blood I’d now smeared on their shirt.
How instinctive it was to slit that hunter’s throat. To be covered in that blood. How familiar it was to me despite how I tried to forget.
