looking like a small child instead of the brawny man that tried to strangle me last night.
He doesn’t notice me silently walk in, looking outside the french door at the moon as I contemplate my next move. It only lasts for a split second before furrowed brows and ocean blue eyes bore into me.
His long brown hair cups his face, giving him a barbaric look along with his facial hair and beard. And the longer I stare back at him, the more his brows deepen like I’ve done something to him.
It’s quite the opposite, and he should know that. I’m sure he wouldn’t let strangers march all over his land. But here I stand, a few yards from the agitated man that is now my prisoner, and I should be thinking of ways to get rid of him.
Not curious.
“Miss me already?” he grumbles, looking back at where he was looking before I walked in.
I answer by stepping deeper into the room, aware that I’m more powerful than him and not fearful of the muscles that bulge from his shirt. Or the thighs that could stomp me into dust. I was afraid of what his plans were and what else was going to happen due to his being here.
It was self-righteous suicide. Which made no sense because he doesn’t seem like an idiot.
“Still not speaking, are we?” he asks, still staring outside.
Pretty much, yes.
He doesn’t deserve for me to speak to him, but I’ll have to at some point. And as much as he doesn’t frighten me, I sense no fear in him either, which does nothing for me because dread makes people do stupid things.
“Did we move on to boring me to death now?” I thrust back a chuckle, no wonder Nesrine likes him, he’s sarcastic and crass like her. “You can leave, Blood. I’m not in the mood for a staring contest.”
I do something risky, something my body warns me profusely not to do, but I force it to anyways—I sit in front of him.
Crossing my legs, I straighten my back, hoping that the innocent look in my eyes gets him to speak.
“What now?”
I tuck a piece of hair behind my ear.
Purity, that’s what Father says I am. A sweet shell in a bottomless ocean that he wanted to protect from the evils of this world.
But he’d never be able to do that.
Even undersea, threats were imminent. They were everywhere. Not just from the creatures that lived under the ocean, but the Hunters who chased and captured my species for sport.
“That pretty little face isn’t going to fool me, Blood.”
The warm breeze picks up in the room, encompassing me, but it sends a cool shiver down my spine. I don’t know if it’s warning me or that I’m anxious being in this room with him again. Or it’s that I’ll have to have him killed because he’s too hard-headed, which means I’ll receive no answers.
“You haven’t decided yet,” he claims. “To kill me or get whatever you can out of me first. You’re curious about me just as much as I’m curious about you because your people don’t come up to Scotland and Norway, and we rarely come down here—” He looks at me. “—and you want to know why.”
I nod.
“Does it matter?”
I nod again.
He leans toward me, inhaling a deep breath as though he’s smelling me. “Too bad.”
My jaw locks as I notice a faint scar above his brow. The straight nose that falls to perfect lips. And the movement of his fingers around a bulky ring.
He twists it on his index finger—an animal of some kind that I know I’ve seen before in one of my books marks the top. It’s gold and gaudy, something Tobias would bring home to me.
“Never seen a ring?” he asks, snagging my attention back up to his face. In my silence, he takes it off and holds it out for me to take.
Extending my palm, he drops it, letting me feel the warmness of the metal on my cool hands. I clasp it then go to slide it down my finger but stop.
This isn’t mine, and I don’t know what it does if I put it on.
“Go ahead,” he urges.
I glance back up at him. He reveals no emotion or intentions of any kind, but I don’t trust him. I hold up his trinket for him to take back, and he does the same, extending his palm for me to drop it in.
“It’s a family ring, been in my family for