Page 9 of Blood So Brutal

Luckily, on the second day, the woman who delivered my food also brought me a few books. She didn’t say anything as she set them on the edge of the bed, but I gave her a reassuring nod anyway.

It was the best I could do.

I immediately dove in, looking for anything to fill the mindless hours of imagining the demise of The Golden City. They were older texts, the spines bound in leather and coated with dust. Clearly, the people living here weren’t big on reading.

I couldn’t say I was either. I learned to read as a child, but there weren’t many books that survived the war. Not in Midgrave, anyway.

The first book I picked up was about vampyres. Go fucking figure. I ran my fingers over the delicate cover, taking in the thick texture of the red words.Blood and War.The smell of old pages wafted up at me as I cracked the book open, skimming the first few pages. It seemed to be mostly boring history, but I quickly realized there was something else in this text. Along with the history of the species and some well-known facts, there were dozens and dozens of pages filled with half-scribbled notes and stories of lore.

And I hadn’t heard of a single one of the stories.

One of them in particular discussed an old tale about a powerful descendent who could stop the hungry ones from attacking others. This was someone who could change the world as we knew it, who could end wars and control others with an all-powerful bloodline.

It was interesting enough to distract me for a few hours, interesting enough to make me wonder how much of this was true…

I read, I slept, and I ate just enough to stop anyone from force-feeding me.

Eventually, I was going to make it out of here.

Eventually, I would make them all pay.

Ijolted awake to the sound of a male screaming and snapped my attention to the foreign room around me.

Right. Wolf’s room. Wolf’s bed.

A blanket covered me now, one I was sure I hadn’t put on my own body, but the other side of the bed was still empty aside from the small stack of books I was in the middle of devouring.

The muffled scream rang out again, and I scrambled to the edge of the bed, peering at the floor, only to find Wolf sleeping—shirtless—on his stomach, exposing two massive, angry wounds that spanned his lower back to the top of his shoulder blades.

Goddess above.

“Wolf!” I called out in the night. He was flinching, glistening in sweat, fighting something in his sleep—something I couldn’t see, somewhere I couldn’t follow.

I shouldn’t have cared. I should have enjoyed the sound of his helpless whimpers, but when a scream threatened to crawl from his throat the third time, I jumped out of bed and knelt at his side.

“Wolf, wake up!” I said again as I gripped his bare arm—careful not to get any closer to his wounds—and shook him.

He opened his eyes instantly and scrambled to a kneeling position. His chest rose and fell rapidly, heavily, as if he had just been in combat. Sweat plastered his dark hair to his forehead, beading down the sides of his face and dripping onto his chest.

His eyes scanned the entire room before falling on me. “It’s you,” he breathed between pants.

“It’s me,” I answered. “You were having a nightmare.”

Wolf tilted his head back and laughed. Loudly. “Yeah, that seems to be happening a lot these days. The problem is, my real life has become equally nightmarish.”

My stomach knotted. “Why were you asleep on the floor? How long was I out?”

“A day. I didn’t want to wake you.”

“So you slept on the floor of your own bedroom?”

He tore his eyes away and ran a hand through his damp locks. “No offense, Huntress, but the last thing I want to do is make you feel even more uncomfortable. I’m perfectly fine on the floor.”

Wolf didn’t wait for my reply. Instead, he pushed himself up and walked to the bathroom, turning on the sink without closing the door.

I stood and followed him, lingering at the door frame.

“Your scars look horrible,” I noted.

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