Chapter Three

Devlin's POV

I dragged myself deeper into the forest, terrified at the idea of my father and Corvin sending guards to drag me back inside the walls of Edevane for punishment.

 Every step cost something. My body made sure I knew it. 

The headache had settled into a dull continuous throb behind my eyes, and my face still burned where his hand had connected. 

My wet clothes clung to me, heavy and cold, and the night air wasn't helping.

 I wrapped my arms around myself and kept moving.

 Stopping felt like surrender.

 My foot caught on a branch. I went down hard, hands slamming into the dirt, cheek narrowly missing a root.

 I lay there for a moment.

 The rest was welcome, even like this, even face down on the forest floor.

 I closed my eyes and listened to the sounds of the night around me. Insects.

 Wind moving through the branches above. Somewhere distant, water flowing.

 The sound of footsteps disturbed my rest. Not one set but several. I scrambled to my feet.

I looked around the forest.

 The darkness was thick between the trees but my eyes had adjusted a bit. I could see them.

 Small amber lights moving between the trunks, low to the ground, blinking slowly.

Glowing eyes. "Human." My heart sank.

 Werewolves. I didn't stick around to count them. I bolted.

 The tree branches whipped at my face but I barely registered them over the sound of my own breathing.

 Behind me I heard the sounds of transformation. Bones shifting, cracking and reattaching to muscle.

 I knew I couldn't outrun werewolves. 

Not in the dark, in a forest I didn't know, with a body that had already been through what mine had tonight.

 And I couldn't fight them.

 There were more than two, I had counted at least four sets of eyes and there could have been more behind those.

 I tried to think in the chaos.

 The sound of water grew louder.

 A lake came into view through the trees, wide and dark, the surface catching just enough moonlight to show me its edges.

 I remembered something I had read once, years ago, in one of the texts my tutor had considered beneath serious study.

 Wolves were poor swimmers.

 If I couldn't outrun them I could at least try to outswim them.

 The wolves seemed to sense the shift in my direction.

 They moved faster. I could hear them closing the distance, paws tearing up the ground behind me.

 I hit the water running.

 The cold was immediate. It knocked the air from my chest and bit straight into every cut and scrape on my body.

 The wound on my face, the bruising from the headboard, the scrapes from the wall, all of it ignited at once.

 I cried out and kept pushing, driving myself deeper, arms churning, legs kicking, trying to put distance between myself and the bank.

 I heard the wolves stop at the water's edge. I pushed further and further.

 The cold was everywhere now, inside my ears and behind my eyes, seeping through muscle and into bone.

 Then my body stopped. The adrenaline went out like a candle.

 All at once and without it I felt the true weight of everything I had been carrying since I hit that headboard.

 The pain wasn't a throb anymore. I went under.

 The lake swallowed the sound of everything.

 Down here there was no forest, no wolves, no celebration drifting through the floorboards of a house that had never quite felt like mine.

 Too tired to fight anymore, I let myself go. I sank deeper and deeper.

 The water burning my lungs as it entered. I had only one thought.

 If my parents knew I was gone, if Corvin knew, would they regret it.

 Would they feel even a small portion of what they had made me feel tonight.

 Probably not.

 Strong arms closed around me from behind. They dragged me upward fast and without gentleness.

 I broke the surface gasping, water pouring out of me, lungs seizing as they tried to remember their purpose.

 I was thrown onto the forest floor. When I finally looked up, there were five men standing over me.

 Naked. Every one of them.

 One of them walked towards me. I shuffled backwards on the ground. He grabbed my ankles and dragged me forward.

 I ended up face to face with a part of him I had no intention of looking at. I turned my head hard to the side.

 He caught my jaw in his hand and turned it back, gripping firmly, tilting my face up toward to meet his eyes. "Pretty little thing."

 His thumb pressed into my cheek just below the bruising. "But your face is all busted up."

 "Let me go." I twisted against his grip. "Let me go right now." His hand tightened. 

"Can't do that, sweetheart. I caught you. Saved you too. That makes you mine to deal with."

 "My father is the chief of Edevane." The words came out shakier than I wanted.

 "He will have your heads for this."

 "Now what would a chief's daughter be doing outside the city walls?" It wasn't really a question.

 I said nothing. What was I supposed to say? That I had stabbed a man and scaled the wall and nearly drowned myself in a lake.

 That I had nowhere left to go and no one coming for me. His mouth curved.

 "Thought so." He released my jaw and straightened up.

 Looked at the others over my head. "Throw her in the cage.”