Captive of Wolves (Bound to the Fae #1) - Eva Chase Page 0,103

pulse skittering, hardly able to wrap my head around the fact that I did that.

I don’t think even my attacker realizes that. Why would she even imagine I could have when it’s supposedly impossible for a human to use fae magic? I said the true name so raggedly she might not have heard it at all over her snarl.

She mutters a few more curses aimed specifically at Sylas and tosses the apparently useless weapon away before glowering at me. “What protective charms has he put on you? Why is he so concerned about one feeble human girl?”

“I—I don’t know,” I stammer. Squashed beneath her, I can’t fend off the panic anymore. It floods my mind and stiffens my body. If I could just grab the ruined dagger myself—or a stick—something— But I can hardly breathe, my lungs closing in on themselves.

“One more answer I’ll have to discover for myself,” she snaps, and flicks her wolfish claws free from her fingertips.

The immediate surge of fear sends a sharp enough spike of adrenaline through me to break me from the vise of panic. I flail out with another cry, so abruptly and wildly I must take her by surprise. My knee slams into her gut. She reels backward with a wince, and I shove myself out from under her. Where’s the dagger? I have nothing, nothing but a word that can’t do a thing against her claws or fangs, or her magic if she turns to that instead—

Recovering in an instant, the fae woman hurls herself at me again—and a massive, furred shape charges out of the shadows with a roar.

The wolf rams into my attacker, sending her rolling across the forest floor. She shifts as she spins and leaps onto her feet in her own wolfish form. My rescuer is already leaping at her, fangs bared, eyes glinting with fury—one dark, one scarred through and ghostly white.

My pulse stutters, grateful for Sylas’s arrival but also terrified of how he’ll react once he turns his attention on me. I fled; I abandoned him and his pack. He might be furious with me too.

Watching the immense beasts tussle and growl in the darkness sends me spiraling back to the night Aerik and his cadre found me—to the slashing of claws and the splatter of blood…

Another wolfish form bursts from the depths of the forest to join the fight. The pale wolf of the fae woman wheels, bringing her dangerously close to where I’m sprawled.

A sound like a whine seeps from my clenched throat. I try to scramble backward, my fingers fumbling against the dry earth, and strong arms grasp me from behind.

I’ve lost so much of my breath that what would have been a scream comes out as only a squeak. But then the hands that have grabbed me tug me partway around, and I catch a glimpse of Whitt’s face, his ocean-blue eyes focused on the skirmish beyond me.

He pulls me with him a few feet back through the trees, putting the broad trunk of an oak between us and the fighting. Then he tucks me close against his chest. I gulp for air, feeling like a fish tossed into the open air of a beach.

It should be fine. Sylas could probably have overpowered that woman on his own, and now it’s two against one. But all I can see now, flooding my mind and drowning me in terror, is Jamie’s body the way it lay mangled on the grass the last time I saw him under trees like these, the vicious paw cracking open his skull, the teeth flecked with scarlet—

My fault. And Mom and Dad and— They came after me. It was all my fault.

Whitt’s voice penetrates the icy fog in my head, his breath coursing over my forehead. “I’ve got you. Sylas and August can take her. You’re safe now.”

My cheek is pressed against his shoulder. His scent washes over me, warmer than I would have expected, like sun-baked sand tossed by the summer wind. Between that and his melodic voice, the suffocating sensation begins to ease.

I manage to drag in a breath, catching a strong alcoholic tang as I do. Either he was drinking quite a lot before he showed up here, or he spilled a sizeable portion on his shirt.

As the muddle in my head clears, confusion creeps in. This doesn’t make any sense. I thought he wanted me gone. He could be hauling me off to one of those passages to the human world right now