Page 55 of A Promise so Bold and Broken

Raine chuckled again. “You sure? I know some of my friends back there will be happy to see Merrick, and I’m quite certain they won’t mind the two humans either. They’re handsome for not being Fae. You might have to face the night alone, little broken one. I’m not so certain you can handle it.”

Rage struck her like a bolt of lightning.

She felt like punching Raine’s smug face as heat, and not from embarrassment, flooded her veins, and a growl built inside her as she took a step toward him.

“She’ll be fine,” Merrick snarled, gripping her arm. “Enough.”

“I’m merely stating facts.” Raine innocently rounded his eyes. “In fact, I know someone who will beveryhappy to see you, Merrick, so you won’t be able to babysit her for long.”

There wasn’t anything human about the growl that burst through her.

The vicious sound traveled across the beach and crystal sea, and only because Merrick’s hand locked around her arm did she not rip Raine’s damned head off.

Ydren popped her head over the calm surface, and her screech was enough to snap Lessia out of the haze that had overtaken her mind.

Staring at the terrifying creature, she drew a shaky breath.

Her body continued fighting against Merrick’s hold as she drew another one, but when she got to the third, she could finally feel her muscles relax, the sand swirling around her feet trickling down to join the millions of other grains across the beach.

“So angry, even after a full day of training.” Raine smirked, but when Merrick growled in warning, he rolled his eyes. “You might want to rein in that temper tonight. My friends do not take well to being threatened.”

“I said enough, Raine.” Merrick’s whispers emphasized his edged tone, and the gentle wind filled with oily vibrations.

A shudder made its way down her spine when the air around her began gleaming, and she wondered if those shimmers were some type of veil, keeping the dead souls from their world.

Pushing the thought out of her mind, she focused on Raine again.

Perhaps she didn’t want to know.

“Fine.” Glancing at the wyvern swimming by the shoreline, Raine rolled his neck. “Ydren tells me you were quite angry when you used your magic on her as well.” He tsked. “Compelling a poor, innocent wyvern… That wasn’t very nice of you.”

Lessia flashed her teeth at him, trying to quench a new wave of fury directed at the Fae warrior. “It wasn’t very nice of her to try to kill me either.”

“She protects me.” Raine shrugged. “She didn’t know you; you could have been a threat.” His eyes traveled over her, even with another warning snarl from Merrick. “I haven’t met anyone who could control wyverns before.”

“You must have done it to make her so loyal to you,” Lessia hissed through her teeth. “She is lonely here. I’m sure she wouldn’t stay if you weren’t forcing her.”

“Lessia,” Merrick warned quietly.

Raine snapped his eyes to hers, his jaw tensing. “I am not forcing her to do anything! Her family is dead.”

Lessia swallowed as she shot a look at the still-swimming wyvern.

“Yes, it hadn’t crossed your mind that I am protecting her right back?” Raine took a step toward her. “I saved her life when some shifters slaughtered her family. They ripped her mother’s head off right before her eyes and struck her sister with so many arrows that the weight of them made it impossible to recover her body.”

He took another step, and Merrick’s fingers tightened around her arm.

“When those rebels came here, she was so frightened by their shifter leader, it took me days to find her. She’d crept into a cave so small she nearly couldn’t leave it. I almost drowned getting her out of there.”

“I didn’t know,” Lessia whispered, the greasy feeling of guilt that lathered across her skin worse than any dust and sand sticking to it from training.

“No, you just assumed.” Raine’s hazel eyes were so cold that she stepped back into Merrick’s chest. “Our dear gods gave the Fae royals stones: fucking sparkling stones that were meant for us to communicate—bond—with the wyverns. They abused what was meant to be a sacred bond—lied to the wyverns to get them to fight for us in whatever damn war was going on. Thousands of them died out of loyalty to a family that wouldn’t care if their enemies plucked off every single scale on their babes’ bodies.”

Merrick’s chest heaved against her back, each breath moving in rhythm with her breaking heart, and she might have fallen to the sand in a heap of shame if his arms hadn’t wrapped around her waist.

When a tear slid down her cheek as she glanced at Ydren, who’d begun swimming away, Raine nodded. “Don’t assume you know me, or anyone for that matter, because of what you see.”

“I’m sorry,” she got out in a choked voice.

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