Chapter 39
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Fawn
T he sound of dripping water rouses me. A groan escapes my lips as I try to move—every part of me hurts. I’m on a narrow cot, a rough blanket beneath me and another covering me. No, not a blanket, a large cloak.
There is a lamp somewhere behind me… A low snort alerts me to the fact that I’m not alone. The shuffle of footsteps. Another snort.
The hairs rise at the back of my neck, even as the familiar scent calms my racing heart.
Feet enter my periphery—broad, naked, giant feet. I lift my eyes up and up over thick muscular thighs… my gaze snags at the huge cock hanging thick and heavy between his slightly spread legs… I gulp and continue up over thick abdominals, a great barrel chest, and brawny shoulders until I reach Eiden’s beastly stag’s head, the antlers so immense that they barely skim the ceiling of the small room.
He crouches, and his huge hand, bruised and split, reaches to cup my chin. “How do you feel?” The words rumble out like distant thunder around his stag jaws. His eyes are a dazzling winter blue and seem to whirl like a storm.
“Sore,” I croak. Broken. “Thirsty.”
He rises, moves to the side of the room where the shadows are deep, and returns with a ladle full of water. Crouching again, he helps me to sit so I can gulp some down, watching me intently. His features are so strange and yet compelling, a stag’s head, but the angles are all wrong. When I look at him, I see an animal, but I also see Eiden.
“I’m sorry. I was too slow.” He looks away. Rising, he tosses the ladle back into the bucket, where it lands with a splash.
“Eiden, you do not need to be sorry for anything. I understand how hard that was for you—that you were terrified of hurting me.”
He snorts out a breath, still not meeting my eyes, his giant form towering over the cot where I sit. “It is my fault you were hurt. I shouldn’t?—”
“It is their fault I was hurt,” I say firmly. “You just saved me.”
He makes a low, rumbling noise that makes me smile. How can such a huge, fierce creature present this unexpectedly humble facade?
He finally looks at me again. “Do you think you could shift?”
“No.” It would help with my injuries, although it would also sap what little energy I have. “My doe is quaking. She will not show herself while we are in this place… We are still in Wormwood, I presume?”
He nods, his immense bulk seeming to suck in the small amount of light. “We are.”
My throat is throbbing, but the bleeding seems to have stopped. My fingers reach tentatively toward my throat, finding a bandage there.
“Do not touch,” he rumbles.
I take my hand away. “Where exactly are we in Wormwood? Do… do you know how to get out?”
“Deep underground. Safe, for now.”
“What happened?” I ask. “After you…”
“I killed them all,” he says, turning in profile, the light from the small lamp setting his wounds into stark relief.
My breath leaves me in a hiss. “Eiden, your back.”
A crossbow bolt is still embedded in his upper back. Another, this one with the end snapped off, is in his shoulder. Both weep a trail of blood. The tips are likely metal. He cannot shift to heal. He might not be able to either way in his state of heightened alert, much like my doe.
His head swings back to face me.
“Should I… Can I pull them out?” I ask.
He glances over his shoulder, his strange animal brows knitting together in a frown. Reaching back, he grasps the snapped-off shaft in his shoulder.
“Eiden, no!”
He tugs.
It comes out with a wet plop. Fresh blood begins to stream.
“Don’t move,” he rumbles when I try to rise. “If you open the wound, I will have no choice but to tell Nox.”
His animal lips curve up in a smile.
A rush of emotions swamps me at his spark humor, making me want to laugh and cry all at once.
He drops the broken bolt to the floor, and before I can offer a token protest, he reaches back, gasps the second bolt, and rips that out as well. It joins the other on the floor.
I burst into tears. “Oh, I don’t know if that was a good idea. Now you are bleeding everywhere!”
He stoops down, and so gently, it makes me weep harder, gathers me into his arms. Sitting on the small cot, he settles me in his arms, tucking my cheek against his warm chest.
“What are we going to do?” I wail. “How will we ever get out?”
“No one will touch you.” He wraps the cloak around me, tucking it to my chin. “No one will dare come near. I went on quite the rampage. Word has spread. One look at me, and they run screaming in fear.”
I believe him.
His scent pools heat in my belly, mixing up with the dangers past and present and the glory of being alive. I rub my nose against his throat, finding the soft fur. A throb kicks off in my core.
Desire for him, for my mate.
“Don’t,” he rumbles in warning.
A caution I ignore as I push the cloak aside and move to straddle him. My cheeks are damp from my tears, and my body is awash with pain, but they are overwritten by a hunger for connection.
I lean back, making space between us, reaching down and closing my fingers around his impossibly thick girth. He is already growing hard as I stroke him.
“I’m weak for you,” he says, his snout bushing up the uninjured side of my throat, his tongue lapping over my jaw and then my lips.
“I need you, Eiden,” I say, breathless, weeping slick, desperate for the feel of him inside me. “I need you like this. To show your stag I love him well. To show him he is mine.”
His big hands grip my hips, lifting me, allowing me to put his cock where I need it.
I sink a small way down and gasp at the stretch.
He stills, holding me off him.
“Oh, don’t stop,” I whine, wriggling to get him to fill me all up.
He does, the delectable stretch offering the perfect bite of pleasure and pain amid this backdrop of desolation.
“More!” I steady myself with my hands on his shoulders, burying my nose against his throat again, sucking in his glorious scent.
“Gods, I won’t last,” he says, taking my hips in his big hands and fucking up into me from below, making nerves the length of my channel spark.
“I’m close, Eiden. Don’t stop.” I reach between us, my fingertips brushing over my clit, petting myself there, caught up in the frenzy as he makes me his. “I’m coming!”
My pussy squeezes over him, sweet climatic waves that have me moaning and panting.
He growls, his thrusts turning erratic before he seats himself deeply and stills. I feel him pulsing inside me, filling up the emptiness. Then he wraps me up in his strong arms, reminding me that, for now, I am safe.
“I love you, Eiden.”
“As I love you, my sweet Fawn. We shall get out of this, I promise.”
A knock sounds on the wooden door, making me jump.
Eiden snarls, snatches up the cloak, and drapes it over me. “Enter,” he calls.
I peer back. The wooden door creaks as it swings open, and a small, weasely man enters. His clothes are little more than rags. He bobs his head and holds out a bundle. “I brought clothes. Best as could be found.” He licks his cracked, dirty lips and eyeballs me. Eiden growls, and the man snaps his beady gaze away. “I’ll leave ‘em here then.” He performs a low bow and places the bundle on the floor.
Only now do I notice that his left hand is a claw like a crab.
“Shit’s kicked off up top.” His cackle is high and a little crazy in nature. “Troops ‘av entered Wormwood fer the first time in many generations. Stirred things up good an’ proper.” He cackles again. “Fires… fires everywhere. Looting. And death. A good bit of death. Lots of pickings come tomorrow.”
“Keep me posted,” Eiden says.
The strange man bobs his head. His eyes slide to me again.
Eiden growls, and the man flees the room, the door banging into the jamb behind him.
“Eiden,” I whisper. “What have you done?”
“I might have started a riot.”
“Might have?!”
“I started a riot,” he amends and shrugs his big shoulders. “News has spread beyond the walls of Wormwood. They will be coming for us. We need to be ready for when they do. It is time we got dressed.”