Captive of Wolves (Bound to the Fae #1) - Eva Chase Page 0,121

with slowing breaths beneath me, August and Whitt join us.

The other two wolves recline on the floor, forming a circle around me. I stretch my arm to rub the spot between August’s ears, and he gives me an eager pant with a flash of his tongue before tucking his muzzle over my knee and closing his eyes.

My eyelids slip shut too. It’s been a long night, and the rhythm of Sylas’s breaths within that ring of warmth lulls me right to sleep.

I wake up late enough that the sun shines brightly through the skylights, and find not fur beneath my head but the fabric of Sylas’s shirt. Sometime as they slept, the fae lord and his cadre have transformed back into men.

Sylas’s arm rests protectively against my back. Fingers are stroking over my ankle. Glancing down, I’m surprised to see they belong to Whitt. His head is cushioned on his arm just inches from my heel, his other hand drifting idly as it rests against my calf, maybe caught up in some dream. From their relaxed expressions and the slackness of their bodies, all three appear to still be asleep.

I suppose they tired themselves out a lot more than I did last night. My part of the work was over pretty quickly. And maybe they’re more used to sleeping on floors. When I ease myself into a sitting position, my back protests, an ache running from my shoulder blade to my hip.

A yawn stretches my jaw, but my bladder pinches at the same time, demanding release before I try to get any more rest myself. August stirs but doesn’t wake as I step carefully over his legs. I slip down the hall, setting my foot brace down as quietly as I can given the stiffness of my joints. Once I reach the staircase, I let myself move a little faster.

When I emerge from the second-floor privy, the brilliant gleam of the sunlight catches my eye. I meander over to the big window where weeks ago I watched Whitt host a revel and realized there was more to him than wry remarks and artful carelessness.

A few of the pack members have gone to sleep in the field, finally at peace after that long, horrible night. No one is moving around the houses that I can see. My eyes travel beyond them, over the wider plains and the distant forest, and then across to the rolling hills at the southeast end of Sylas’s domain.

My gaze stalls on a lupine form poised at the top of one of those hills. A fae still embracing his wolf.

There’s nothing so odd about that. It could have been that one of the pack members woke up early and went for a run to shake off uneasiness leftover from last night. But what’s frozen me in place isn’t the fact that there’s a wolf at all, but the color of its fur catching in the sunlight.

It’s a blueish white like a thick layer of ice over open water. Like icicles reflecting a clear winter sky.

Like the hair of the sharp-edged man from Aerik’s cadre.

The wolf is watching the keep just as I’m watching the wolf. It tilts its head at a devious angle so like my most vicious former captor that the bottom drops out of my stomach, taking any doubt I’d held onto with it.

Then the creature whips around and vanishes down the back of the hill, leaving me clutching the window frame and wondering how long I have before the home I just won is wrenched from me.

* * *

Will Talia’s wolfish saviors be able to protect her from her former captors, who’ll stop at nothing to get her back? Find out in Feral Blood, the second book in the Bound to the Fae series. Get Feral Blood now!

Did you wonder what was going through Whitt’s head when he convinced Talia to leave the keep, and what caused his change of heart afterward? Grab a free bonus scene from his POV here!

Next in the Bound to the Fae series

Feral Blood (Bound to the Fae #2)

Twice I’ve been kidnapped by the fae.

First were the monsters who ripped me from everything I knew and threw me in a cage.

Next came the men who rescued me and offered me a safe haven.

But my saviors and my former captors have something in common. A decades-old curse holds all the Seelie fae in its grasp, turning them into savage, mindless beasts with the rise of the full moon. Something in