Captive of Wolves (Bound to the Fae #1) - Eva Chase Page 0,32
stars whirl overhead. My little brother calls my name, his voice wavering through the twilight. I blink, and I see him silhouetted in the distance, Mom and Dad on either side of him, coming this way.
No, no, they can’t. The monsters are coming.
But my body won’t move, no sound will travel up my throat. When I called out to them before, I thought I was fighting, struggling to survive, but all I did was give everything up.
Just one word. One cry of warning. A cold sweat breaks out across my skin, my lips part a fraction of an inch—
Claws slash from the darkness, carving screams in their wake. Not again, not—
A hand grasps my arm, and I yelp, thrashing. Thrashing… against the soft sheet tangled around my legs.
I wheeze, my lungs constricted with panic, my pulse thundering in my ears. The air tastes like lavender and wildflowers. Moonlight streams through the gap in the curtains—in my bedroom, or the room that’s my bedroom for now, at least.
And the hand still gripping my arm, carefully but firmly, belongs to the massive man sitting beside me on the bed, his milky scarred eye even more eerie in the dimness.
“You were having a nightmare,” Sylas says, his voice slow and measured, as if talking to a young child. “You were crying out. There’s no easy way to wake from one like that.”
No, I didn’t wake easy at all. As my eyes adjust to the faint moonlight, I make out a fresh scratch on his unscarred cheek where my fingernail must have caught him when I lashed out.
He heard me in distress and came to shake me out of it, and I attacked him. My heart stutters all over again. What consequences am I going to face for that mistake?
My voice wobbles as it spills out. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—I didn’t realize—”
“The dream followed you out,” he says, calmly enough that the alarm clanging through me starts to dull. “They do that sometimes. Are you all right now?”
A laugh catches in my throat. How can I possibly be all right, even now that I’m awake? But I know what he means.
“Yes,” I say. My body is catching up with reality, the panic falling away. “Thank you. It was… awful.”
I expect him to get up and leave. Did I wake him up with the noises I was making—oh, crap, did I wake all of them up?
But Sylas doesn’t appear to be in any hurry to get back to his own bed, if he was even already in it when the nightmare hit me and not burning the midnight oil on whatever it is he does when he’s not kidnapping human girls and making crutches for them. How much do fae even need to sleep?
He sets down my arm but stays where he’s sitting, close enough that my knee tingles with the proximity of his hip even though it isn’t quite touching me. His dark eye studies my face. “What did you dream about?”
A shiver runs through me, just remembering. The memory of my family sends an ache through my chest so sharp I know I can’t talk about that. But the rest…
“When the other fae—Aerik and whoever—had me,” I say. “There was a point when I gave up. I didn’t think I’d ever get away from them, and I just wanted to die. So I refused to eat or drink anything… But it didn’t work. When I got weak enough, they forced things down my throat. I couldn’t stop them. I couldn’t do anything. Not even die. It was… the worst I ever felt.”
Sylas nods. “I can see how that would be.”
I swipe my hand across my mouth. A prickling sensation has formed behind my eyes, but I don’t want to cry in front of him. He’s seen me in a bad enough state without adding to it.
“I decided that if I had to live, I’d better make sure I was strong enough to do something with that life, even if it wasn’t much. I couldn’t stand staying completely helpless like that. So I kept eating, and when I could move I did, just to work my muscles a little. Just… just in case.” My shoulders tense. “I dreamed it happened all over again—the weakness, the way they force-fed me. That’s all.”
“They never should have treated you that way,” Sylas says firmly. “Some of my fae kin may be pitiless, but I promise you it’s far from all of us.” He pauses. “Aerik and