Page 24 of The Wild Prince's Favorite
Not knowing if her baby had survived or not was a torture worse than any physical pain she could have endured. She tried to move, hoping to get up to find someone and ask, but her whole body winced in protest. She was badly hurt, and only now was she fully realizing just how badly. Everything hurt, literally so, and it was worse when she tried to move.
As she had tried anyway, her hand came into sight. It was covered in bandages, and smelled of something she didn’t recognize. Alezya took a minute to try and stubbornly move her body, taking the full measure of what had been done to it.
All of her injuries were bandaged. She could even feel some strange paste on her lip where it had been cut. Her feet were the most painful of all, but she could tell they were also bandaged all the way up to her ankles and something cooling had been spread on her soles. Her flank was covered by bandages tightened around her waist too; she could feel them with each breath she took.
She wasn’t wearing anything but her underwear, all her clothes were gone.
She forced herself to sit up a bit and the blanket fell from her neck down to her chest, just enough to cover her bare chest. It wasn’t a simple blanket, but a sheet covered by two layers of thick fur.
No wonder she felt so warm all along...
Someone suddenly stepped inside the habitation, and all her hopes vanished like snow under the sun.
It was a man like she had never seen before. He was tall, dark-skinned, and most shocking of all, he had eyes of vibrant green. The color contrasted so starkly with his dark skin and hair that she was rendered speechless. It was both beautiful and terrifying to see a human being so different from any she had ever met.
She felt like a large beast had just walked in, a foreign species that she could only see as a dangerous one. He didn’t have fangs or claws, but she could tell just by the sight of him; he was a warrior. His body was covered by a cape, but that large frame of his made it easy to guess the size of the muscles underneath.
Her questions died in her throat. She was on the other side, amongst the Dragon Clan’s people. A wave of panic surged in her mind.
How? Why? Had she been captured, not rescued? She wasn’t restrained, but her body was in no state to run anywhere anyway. She watched every one of the man’s movements, feeling like prey in a predator’s den.
He seemed surprised she was awake; his shining green eyes lit up and opened wider as soon as they met hers.
That man suddenly taking large strides toward her put Alezya even more on alert, and she forced her body to retreat as far as possible, by mere survival instinct. He seemed to notice because he slowed down before reaching the bed.
What was he going to do, now that she was awake?
Alezya was mentally preparing herself for anything. She’d seen so many men treat women like slaves, especially those they knew nothing of. If they weren’t some other man’s daughter or wife, they were disposable. This man knew nothing of her, nothing of her clan even.
She kept retreating, no matter how much her body screamed in pain, using her elbows to push herself back toward the edge of the bed, her legs pathetically dragging behind. There were only a few inches of difference from her initial position to when her shoulder touched the wall, but that was the best she could do to protect herself.
But then, to her shock, the man put a knee down.
It was the last thing she would have expected, for this foreigner to lower himself in front of her. She didn’t even know what to make of this. What was going on?
She glanced toward the entrance he had come from, but realistically, she wouldn’t be able to run before he grabbed her. No, she wouldn’t even be able to run at all. The man was staring at her, making her horribly nervous. She wanted to ask what he wanted with her, where her baby was.
He spoke first.
“Kayf ha du sheyrkaha?”
She frowned. His tongue was strange.
She had never heard any of the Dragon Clan’s people speak before. They spoke with guttural sounds, sharp like a snow leopard’s claws. She could vaguely understand from his tone that he was asking her something, but what?
He waited for a few seconds for her to answer, but eventually gave up. Instead, his eyes drifted down, and as she followed it, she realized the hand that she was using to support herself had begun bleeding through the bandages and onto the sheets. A new wave of panic hit her. How was he going to react?
He stood up, his height scaring her even more, and walked to one of the shelves, presumably to get something. He was so tall that his head almost touched the ceiling of this place, but perhaps it had been made to fit his height. Why else would they have put such high pillars?
He returned with a roll of what she recognized to be the same thing she was bandaged with and a bowl of a mixture that smelled like what was on her injuries too.No way,Alezya thought.
That man was the one who had treated her injuries?
“Ti inkir banzifha.”
She could understand nothing of what he had said. Was he talking to himself or to her?
He suddenly reached out his hand, but that only made Alezya jolt and try to retreat more. Her eyes went up to his hand, and that’s when she noticed something on his forearm. It was orange, brighter than his skin, and it looked like scales.
