turned into a blaze of fury.
Fury at myself and my stupidity. At this man, this mountain man who thought he could just take me like I was a deer in the woods. It coursed through me in an unthinking rush. Instinctively, I brought up my tied hands, suffusing as much strength and force into the upswing as I could, and abused him between his legs.
He broke away from me with a strangled shout and fell back, clutching where only minutes before he’d been stroking. I immediately vomited on the crude wooden floors beside the pallet. The room now reeked with the vilest of human stench, and I emptied what was left in my stomach.
I struggled to draw breath, the room spinning. I had to get out of here. I had to.
I thought of my kidnapping by the Iavii people. Of Kir’s rookery gang. None of it had been so bad as this. Nothing this horrific had happened to me in a long time. I didn’t think anything could match watching my parents and brother die. But if I stayed here, if this man used me and broke me …
I sobbed, tears blinding as I drew my tied hands down onto the floor and used my upper body to drag myself along the wood. The door was just there. I had to get to it.
A bellow echoed around the shack and I was yanked like a rag doll and thrown against the back of the hut. A sickening vibration shot through my body as my head hit the wall.
I slumped on the pallet and watched through blurry eyes as the mountain man approached me, his face mottled with hatred, lechery, and anger. I became a little more alert at the sight of the large hunting knife in his hand.
“Bad wife,” he growled, brandishing the knife. “Teach ye a lesson, I will.”
I beat at him uselessly with my tied hands as he grabbed me by my shirt. And then he tore open the shirt, revealing the curve of my breasts.
“No!” I cried out and swung my hands back up, catching his jaw. The mountain man barely blinked.
“Yer goin’ to behave.” He pointed the knife in my face, and I glared back at him, ignoring the hot tears rolling down my cheek. I took deep breaths as he smiled at me. I let a shaky calm envelop me. If this was to be my end, then I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of enjoying my fear.
I jutted my chin in defiance.
The mountain man tutted and gently placed the tip of the blade at the bottom of my throat. It was menacingly cold as he gently drew it down my skin, scratching me, until he came to the rising curve of my left breast. The blade pressed deeper, and I muffled a cry of shocked pain. He scored a shallow cut along the top of my breast, watching my expression. Blood trickled from the wound and clenched my jaw to keep from looking at the injury.
Mountain man pulled the blade back, grinning the entire time, his eyes alight with excitement. The knife disappeared into a pouch on his hip and he stood. He was huge. Massive. His entire shadow cast me into darkness in the shade of the shack.
He tugged at his trousers and licked his lips. “I like red on ye, wife. It’s good. When I get back, I be bedding ye, ma wife. Bedding ye with a little more red.”
At that, he abruptly turned and left, picking up some crude hunting gear I hadn’t seen. It lay near the door. The door opened, and I searched it greedily for a lock. It slammed shut behind him and I heard his footsteps disappear. I blinked, stupefied by what I’d seen.
There was no lock on the door.
At his sudden departure, the realization of what had just happened—and what was going to happen if I didn’t get out of there—rushed in like a storm against the cliffs of Silvera. Terrified sobs broke out of me in rib-cracking force, and I shook and trembled, damning my stupid pride and fear that had made me come up the mountains without Wolfe.
“Stop it,” I bit out, impatiently brushing the tears from my face with the tips of my fingers. I couldn’t just sit here wallowing. I had to escape. The longer I stayed, the more likely he would return. If that happened, we were all doomed. Haydyn was doomed. I had to get to that plant. I had