5. Survival #2
She needed to get out of these trees and find her way back to the water. And if that took too long, and she ran out of time, she needed to hide so that he wouldn’t find her.
Lyra stopped walking and craned her ears to listen.
It was quiet. She couldn’t hear Wilder’s footsteps now.
There was only the soft rustle of the leaves in the trees.
She smiled to herself, feeling free for the first time and wondering how long it would take him to realize she wasn’t attached to the rope.
A roar of fury had birds flying away and the forest coming to life.
Not long, apparently.
Wilder roared her name like it was a world he planned to conquer. Her actual name—not Legs.
Holding her breath, she crouched under the branches of an immense hawthorn tree. She slid along the base of the trunk to the forest floor.
She needed to stay still and quiet, and surely he would not find her. This seemed to be a vast forest, and he was only one man—elf.
The forest grew quiet again, and she could no longer hear the echo of her name. He must have gone in the opposite direction then.
Lyra had a sudden sinking feeling like she would never make it back to the water. It was an eerie feeling, unsettling and bizarre. It prickled the skin of her palms and slithered through her gut.
A crunch of leaves beside her made her flinch. Her heart was a flurry of panic in her chest. Rough hands seized her arms and wrenched her to her feet. They were not the large, skilled hands of the elf.
“Ah, ah, ah. What do we have here?” The stench of ale had her leaning away from the bear of a man who gripped her.
Her eyes adjusted to the dim light outside of the tree’s shadow.
The man looked monstrous. Scarred cheeks and one milky eye.
“My, my, that is a nice cunt,” another voice chortled from the darkness beside them.
The sound was like claws raking at her skin.
Lyra’s stomach plummeted to the ground.
A meaty, sweaty hand pawed at her face and roughly grabbed her by the cheeks.
“Such a pretty mouth to fuck.”
Terror sliced through her, snatching the air from her lungs. She fought under his hold, biting and clawing at the man who held her. Her thread of power glimmered brighter in her chest.
But she couldn’t. Not even now.
Wilder had warned her there were worse things in these woods. She should have listened.
Blindly biting, she clipped the finger of one.
“Fuck! She bit me!”
She spat the fleshy taste onto the ground. Her mouth filled with saliva as nausea roiled through her stomach.
Disgusting. These men were rotten.
Lyra wasn’t prepared for the punch to the gut that had her doubling over. A groan escaped her as the air deflated her lungs. A searing pain tore at her scalp as he wrenched her head back up.
“Get the dress out of the way, Rupert,” the man from the shadows spoke.
He stepped out of the night then and into the dappled shaft of moonlight spearing through the tree canopy. He was thin, with a hawkish nose and eyes that rivaled the darkness of the forest around him. He tugged at his belt to loosen it and leered at her.
Rupert, the bear of the man holding her, ripped at her dress. The fabric, though heavy to her, tore easily under his fist.
No.
No, this would not happen to her. The thread of power flared, and she pushed that thought away. These men would not take her maidenhead—or her soul.
Lyra fought harder. She would save herself—without losing herself to magic.
She swung wildly and ripped with her short nails at anything she could manage.
“A feisty one! Help me hold her,” Rupert grunted when she tore at the skin of his hand.
The thin man grabbed hold of her from behind, holding her still with astonishing strength.
He licked up the column of her neck. The feel of his tongue had a scream tearing out of her. His breath smelled putrid, like festering, rotten meat.
“Oh, I like it when they scream,” he moaned into her ear.
Lyra threw her head back, and with a satisfying thwack, he let go of her. The crisp night air pebbled her bare breasts, and she moved to escape.
A slinking sound had them all freezing.
Rupert stood frozen, holding the swathe of fabric that had made up the front of her dress.
Lyra blinked, and a blade protruded from his chest. The deepest crimson blood, nearly black, poured from him.
The shadow behind him rippled and pulled the blade out.
It grabbed Lyra by the arm, whirling her to its side.
Another swing had the blade cutting off the thin man’s head. A disgustingly wet thudding sound rang out as his body crumpled to the ground.
“Are you alright?” Wilder asked, sheathing his blade again.
He materialized from the shadows as if he had stepped through them. It took Lyra a moment to realize he was the shadow. He had pulled up the hood of his cape and blended in with the night.
Lyra stood in shock and stared down at the corpses that he had cut down in the blink of an eye. She couldn’t move, other than the rapid movements of her bare chest with each breath.
Wilder coughed and peeled off his cape. He held it out to her, but when she didn’t move or acknowledge it anyway, he pressed it to her naked chest and tied it around her back for her.
“Legs, you still with me?”
When she didn’t respond, he leaned down. Looking into her eyes, he cupped her cheeks. “You’re in shock, but you will be okay. I’m here.”
Lyra couldn’t speak, couldn’t move on her own, as Wilder tugged her away from the humans he had murdered on her behalf. He had come for her—had saved her.
No one had ever saved her before.
She followed him willingly but told herself it was only because he was the lesser of two evils and that she had no other choice now. She couldn’t find her way back to the water, and she couldn’t survive with the mortals.
This was survival.