“You go.” I push Mimi out the back stable entrance just as Master Zake pulls open the sliding front door. By the time his heavy boots echo through the stalls, I’m standing in the middle of the aisle again, my thick locks billowing in the sudden gush of wind.
The icy cold cuts my skin, making even my freckles shiver, but I tighten my hold on the hay-filled wheelbarrow and curtsy. “My lord.”
Around forty, Zake is large, healthy, and muscular, with a thick head of wiry brown hair. He’s amassed a series of scars to go along with his sharp temper, including a long slash across his face that gives him a perpetually displeased expression. Frowning at my wheelbarrow, Zake lifts a heavy saddle with one hand and carries it into a stall. “You should have finished with that half an hour ago, Leralynn,” he calls. “Once I return with this damn wolf’s pelt, you and I shall discuss the meaning of punctuality.”
Bile rises in my throat. “Don’t. Please, Master Zake.”
Zake sticks his head out of the stall, his gaze raking my body and making his scar stretch. “Don’t whip you for laziness?” he inquires with more interest than the question warrants.
I hug my arms over my chest. “Don’t hunt the wolf. It . . . it might be a female.” It isn’t. But I don’t know how I know this, or what else to say. All I know, deep inside me, is that hurting that wolf would be very, very bad. “Maybe she has cubs. Little ones who nurse from her and need her and—”
“Shade is most definitely not nursing cubs.” The unfamiliar voice, rich and musical, comes from the open stable door. Where there was only wind moments ago, now I see a tall man with deeply carved muscles, red hair, and amused emerald-green eyes. Dressed in supple brown leather armor that bares his long, corded arms, he moves with a feline grace that should be impossible to achieve. His mouth, which seems to be caught in a permanent smile, flashes white teeth with just a hint of point on the canines.
I’ve never seen something so beautiful.
He cocks his head at me and my breath catches.
Ears. Delicately pointed ears, one of which is crowned with an intricately worked silver earring. The man isn’t a man at all, but an immortal fae male from beyond the Mystwood forest.
Zake seems to realize the same thing just as I do, and he gasps, eyes wide. Stepping in front of me, my master bows low to the visitor. “Welcome, High One.” Zake’s voice shakes a bit. “I’ve been awaiting you.”
The man—the male—snorts, his eyes skipping over Zake to focus on mine. The nagging feeling inside my core pulses in recognition, but my mind remains blank. I have no idea who this male is, though my body seems to know him. I take a step back, my hand closing around a pitchfork.
The male’s eyes glitter with amusement. “A pleasure to meet you as well, Lera,” he drawls, his voice pulsing with a cockiness that I’ve a sudden desire to knock out of him. I know I should probably be terrified of the male, but instead I’m thinking that, if not for his ears and ethereal beauty, I’d imagine him just a few years older than I am, with his maturity perhaps lagging behind his body’s dominating strength. Gaze firmly on my pitchfork, the male steps neatly around Zake and bows. “I’m Tye. And if it’s an option, lass, I would prefer not to be skewered.”
2. Leralynn
“Please forgive my servant’s impudence, my lord,” Zake says quickly, bowing as he steps between me and the fae warrior again. Zake’s voice drips with desire, like a salivating dog. “It is but a misunderstanding. It is I, not this wench, who’s waited for you here at Mystwood’s edge. I will of course fulfil the honorable request you make of my estate.”
Tye gives Zake a dismissive look and raises a bemused eyebrow at me, as if to say, Who the hell is this?
“Excuse us.” Grabbing my arm, Zake pulls me out the back door of the stable, his large fingers leaving bruises above my elbow. The cold pierces me from all sides, cutting brutally through my thin clothes, but my blood is racing too quickly to worry about the chill. Zake’s nostrils flare, a vein ticking along his temple. “What the hell is this?” he hisses into my face, his rank breath shoving itself inside me. “You think to steal my destiny from under my very nose?”
I try and fail to wrench my arm from his grasp. “I’m not stealing anything.” My breath mists, the words coming quickly as I spot his free hand unbuckling his heavy belt. “I’ve not even laid eyes on a fae male before now, Zake. I swear it on the bloody stars.”
“Is this why you tried to stop my hunt?” Zake snarls into my face. “You wanted to intercept the immortal before he reached me?” His meaty hand turns me around, pressing my head against the barn’s side as the belt uncoils behind me. “What did you offer him, wench? Your maidenhead? Tell me the truth now, girl—it will only hurt more if you lie.”
“I’m not lying,” I say, my body already bracing for the coming blows. “Zake—” I clamp my mouth shut as the belt whistles through the air. There is no stopping this now, and little reason to waste breath that I’ll need shortly.
A furious growl rips through the air. Just when my back is supposed to explode in flame, a dark shape hurtles out of nowhere. Before I can blink, Zake is in the dirt, a large wolf prowling over him. The wolf’s lips pull back, revealing wet canines that glitter in the sun, its thick gray pelt and black muzzle bringing me straight back to last night’s dream.
I gasp, stepping away—and knock right into a wall of muscle and maleness. Tye, the smiling red-haired fae male, is no longer amused. The green-eyed stare he gives Zake is filled with the promise of violence. Not that there will be much of Zake left if the wolf has his way.
“What’s going on back here?” says a quiet voice. A new fae male strides out of the stable, this one dressed in warrior black and sporting a glare that says he’s one breath away from razing the whole estate to the ground. If Tye is an overgrown adolescent, the newcomer is a deadly killer, with long blond hair tied up in a bun, a chiseled jaw, and piercing blue eyes that seem to strip me and find me wanting in one glance. The wicked-looking blades strapped to his waist and back complete the effect.
“Just a wee misunderstanding,” says Tye. “I have it handled.”
The warrior snorts. “That’d be a first.”
Tye sighs in a long-suffering way. “Lera, this is Coal. Try to ignore him the best you can.”
Coal crosses his arms, his eyes finishing their examination of the soon-to-be-dead Zake and the salivating wolf before coming to a stop on my face.
As with Tye, a ripple of recognition races through me, though I’m certain I’ve never seen this male before. My instincts scream at me to run, even as the male’s eyes draw me toward him, the corded muscles of his forearms and shoulders making my breath quicken.
“Time to go, lass,” Tye murmurs into the back of my neck. A command. An invitation. A challenge.
Murderous fae. Mystwood. Broken bones.
My heart pounds, even as my body feels the rightness of Tye’s words and aches to accept them. I swallow, feeling as though the male has claimed me already. And not just him. Five, my soul seems to whisper.
Five what?