Page 13 of Faerie Fate
It felt deep. It felt impossible to survive. I was going to die.
Kendrick grunted. I smelled fresh blood, not mine, like the awful stench of things left to ripen in the sun too long.
Half a heartbeat later, his fingers wrapped around my throat and squeezed, his own cut skin pressed to mine.
I lost my breath. My chest tightened, constricting smaller and smaller until my lungs were no longer working.
And suddenly magic flared between us. It began as a small spark barely flickering enough to combat the dull darkness, then grew brighter as our blood mingled.
This wasn’t the kind of magic I knew, or wanted to know.
This trickled through my system in cold tendrils of frost and decay, obliterating any heat I had left in my body. Kendrick’s forced mate bond permeated through bone and marrow and turned everything dark.
Unnatural.
The bond settled in my veins with the clank of ancient iron, permanent and stinging, done against my will.
The energy connecting us solidified with the permanence of a closed and locked prison cell door, and he squeezed my neck harder. His fingerprints marked my skin as surely as the mystical bond marked the rest of me, changing my soul and capturing my heart in a cage.
I cried out. The twisting, slithering darkness inside only made Kendrick laugh.
“There.” He grunted, still choking me, forcing air and blood out. “Isn’t that better?”
Then he released me, but I couldn’t move, couldn’t even press my own hand to my neck wound to save myself.
His heavy, plodding footsteps beat out an uneven rhythm from his bandy-legged stance and disappeared, the room falling into silence, not even the beating of my heart.
My head spun in useless circles and clawed at mist that had no physical form, nothing for me to latch onto to pull myself free.
Blood loss. The thought came from somewhere in my head, but Kendrick was there, too. In my head. He was everywhere and nowhere at once. He didn’t need to touch me for me to feel him.
Blood still trickled down my neck, soaking through my shirt. I felt woozy, my chin slumped down, unable to hold my head up.
Did he bond with me just to let me die?
Was it better for him this way?
I didn’t want to die mated to him. He’d follow my soul into the afterlife and enslave me there too—absolute power and control. Those were his only goals…
Footsteps back into the room. Kendrick ground out, “Heal her. Now.”
A soft feminine gasp sounded in the devastating wake of his command. “What have you done?” Then a very recognizable scent wafted around me.
Nurse Julie?
She survived?
In the darkness behind the blindfold my mind conjured her image the way I remembered her. She was another species of fae, with gangly limbs, pointed ears, and shiny wings protruding from her shoulder blades in a blue only a shade lighter than her skin.
I remembered their speedy flutter whenever she got overly agitated.
“You shouldn't have cut so deeply,” Julie admonished, her voice trembling. “She’s going into shock.”
Kendrick cleared his throat and something wet hit the ground, my shifter hearing latching onto any minute sound. “I don’t explain myself to you people. Just fucking fix her.”
A wave of malignant disgust filtered down the mate bond between us. I wanted to tell Julie not to make him mad. He’d gleefully slice her throat too, if she refused to be useful, or if she let her tongue run away with her.
Please, Julie, don’t provoke him. He’s prejudiced. He hates the fae.
