But what was right?
"Wake up, Zarek," she whispered. "You only have ten days left to save yourself."
Zarek came awake to a pain that was indescribable, which given his brutal background as a whipping boy and slave was hard to believe. Especially since as a human being, pain had been the only certainty in his life.
His head throbbing, he shifted, expecting to feel cold snow and ground underneath him. Instead, he was struck by how warm he felt.
I'm dead, he thought wryly.
Not even his dreams had ever left him this warm.
Yet as he blinked open his eyes to find a fire blazing in a hearth and a mountain of quilts over him, he realized he was very much alive and lying in someone else's bedroom.
He looked around the room, which was decorated in earth tones: pale pinks, tans, browns, and dark green. The log-cabin walls were the upper-crust kind that denoted someone who wanted the look and feel of a rustic cabin, but who had enough money to make sure it was well insulated and cozy, and not drafty and cold.
His bed was an expensive iron reproduction of the large beds from the end of the nineteenth century. To his left stood a small nightstand where an old-fashioned pitcher and washbowl rested.
Whoever owned this place was loaded.
Zarek hated wealthy people.
"Sasha?"
Zarek frowned at the soft, melodic voice. A woman's voice. She was down the hall in another room, but he couldn't quite pinpoint her location through the pain in his skull.
He heard a soft canine whine.
"Oh, stop that," the woman chided with a gentle tone. "I didn't really hurt your feelings, did I?"
Zarek's frown deepened as he tried to make sense of what had happened to him. Jess and the others were hunting him and he remembered falling down in front of a house.
Someone from the house must have found him and dragged him inside, though why anyone would bother he couldn't imagine.
Not that it mattered. Jess and Thanatos would be after him, and it wouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure out where he was, especially given how much blood he'd been losing as he ran. No doubt, there was a trail that led straight to this cabin's door.
Which meant he had to get out of here ASAP. Jess wouldn't do anything to hurt those who'd helped him, but there was no telling what Thanatos was capable of.
His mind flashed to a burning village. To the horrid sight of people lying dead...
Zarek flinched at the memory, wondering why it would haunt him now.
It was a reminder of what he was capable of, he decided, and a reminder of why he had to get away from here. He didn't want to hurt someone who had been nice to him.
Not again.
Forcing himself to forget the pain of his body, he sat up slowly.
The dog instantly came running into his room.
Only it wasn't a dog, he realized as it stopped by his bed and growled at him. It was a large, white timber wolf. One that appeared to hate him.
"Back off, Scooby," he snapped. "I've made boots from bigger and badder wolves than you."
The wolf bared more teeth as if it understood his words and was daring him to prove them.
"Sasha?"
Zarek froze as the woman appeared in his doorway.