THE LYCAN KING'S STAR MAID
The way she leaned close and ordered me to stay, to breathe, as if I still had any real choice left in the matter.
I remember the press of her wrist under my fingers when I grabbed for her with the last of my strength. I remember the bright, terrified flash of her eyes in the dark. I never saw her clearly enough to draw a reliable face, but those eyes and that scent are burned into me deeper than the scar will ever reach.
I have asked myself a hundred times what a young, unprotected woman was doing alone in that thick forest after dark. An orphan, perhaps. A girl thrown out of her home.