Page 41 of Lifebound

Mayhem. Blood and teeth and swords and golden magic in the air, screams and roars and body pieces.

And a beast wascrawlingon the ground, using the claws that tipped its paws to drag itself closer to me, those eyes, red and wide and fucking terrifying, on me.

Every inch of my body was suddenly numb. My heart squeezed in my chest, and I stopped breathing, the air getting stuck in my throat.

Then the horse turned a sharp corner, and it was a fucking miracle I didn’t fall off. The scream that came out of me could have been louder than those roars, and it made the horse run twice as fast.

I couldn’t hold on.

Leaves on my face, branches against my legs and arms, as if they were trying to yank me off the horse’s back. Darkness everywhere, ahead and to the sides, because we’d gone too far and the golden light of the fae magic no longer reached here.

“Stop, stop, STOP!” I thought I shouted, except I kept moving up and down, slamming against the saddle, and it hurt everywhere.

The horse didn’t stop.

I knew I wasn’t going to make it. There was no way I could hold on for much longer, and if I fell fromthishigh up atthisspeed, I’d die. If I didn’t break my neck against the ground, surely I’d slam onto a tree. If the horse didn’t step on me or kick me when I fell, then that beast that had been crawling on the ground for me would surely get to me eventually.

Where would I even go?!

The panic made black dots explode in my vision.

I should have never come here…

A different kind of darkness suddenly exploded all around us, swallowed every single tree in sight, and the horse finally stopped running.

The next moment, I found myself with my arms wrapped around the horse’s neck, holding on for dear life. He’d been about to throw me off him when he stopped abruptly, and I had no idea how I managed to stop myself, but I was no longer sitting on the saddle. I was sitting on the very base of his neck, arms around him, legs tight to his sides as he neighed and slammed his hooves to the ground, trying to shake me off himself.

I was going to hit the ground any second now, and die for real, when…

We heard this sound—like a whistling coming from far away.

The horse stopped moving, stopped neighing. My muscles squeezed around him even tighter, and though I wanted nothing more than to close my eyes, I couldn’t. My instincts didn’t allow it because the forest had been right there one second, and now there was only darkness. A deep,unnaturaldarkness.

I searched it with my eyes, breathing heavily, unable to stop or stay silent. The horse was looking about, too, his muscles as tense as mine, a low growl coming from his throat.

Then we both saw the silhouette ahead, somehow darkeragainst the black background. I held my breath, dug my fingers into the sides of the horse’s neck, still certain I was going to die.

A heartbeat later, he stepped forward, and the darkness slowly slipped back from his face, as if it were revealing him, clinging to his skin, reluctantly letting go of him while he came closer and closer, his eyes on the horse’s face.

A man.

It was a man, not a beast coming to devour me.

A man who looked like he came from a place where both dreams and nightmares were made, the finest kind, silky smooth and terribly intense at the same time. He was tall, shoulders broad and hips narrow, and his hands were big. I noticed because he’d raised one toward us and held up his index finger as if he wanted me—or the horse—to stand still.

If he only knew that I couldn’t move if I tried, especially when I took in his face.

Hair as dark as the darkness around us, much darker than the night sky, short but not too short, with strands falling over his forehead and his left eye. The tips of his pointy ears peeked through it just fine, though. He looked at the horse from under his lashes, and his eyes were the most unusual blue I had ever seen, an indigo blue with shimmer in it, which could be a trick of the darkness somehow because it looked perfectly unreal. His skin was smooth and healthy, cheeks clean-shaven. His nose was straight and slightly pointy, his lips rich with color, as if he had worn some kind of a lip tint just now that left behind the perfect mauve color, wrapped with an almost completely white outline.

My mind was wiped clean. Not entirely sure why I was so caught up in his appearance—other than the fact that he looked like someone had made him in a lab according to my every preference with a technology that was light-years ahead of ours—but I couldn’t get enough. I couldn’t even get my eyes to blink while Iabsorbedevery inch of him, like this tattoo he seemed to have on the left side of his neck that went underneath his shirt, which was black and a bit loose, and it dipped into a slight V below his neck. The urge to see what was underneath was so insanely irrational it surprised me even in this situation.

But when he was close enough that he could touch the horse’s face, his eyes finally moved to me.

His reaction confused me. He lookedsurprisedto find me there—those indigo eyes widened, pupils dilated, easy to notice. His lips, those gorgeous lips parted, and for a good second, he was just as frozen in place as me.

Maybe he hadn’t known I was on the back of this horse? Maybe he thought it was just the horse running wild around the woods?

The horse moved slightly back, growled deeper, and since my hands were right under his neck, Ifeltthe sound of him vibrating up to my arms.

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