Page 8 of Faerie Fate
Chapter Three
The pain never got any easier to tolerate no matter how many times I got knocked out.
At this point, I practically majored in unconsciousness.
My pulse thrummed in my ears, but through the tympanic explosion I caught the echo of voices.Arguingvoices. The surface from unconsciousness left me with a muddy head and struggling to figure out exactly what was being said.
Nerves needled my insides and I sucked in a breath to the bottom of my lungs.
“You’ve got some fucking balls.” A male voice.
“I’m sorry.” The second person to speak was pissed, the reed-thin voice wavering but hard. Also male. He seemed to bite down on a growl that ended with a strangled whine. “I’msorry.”
Flesh sounded on flesh in a dull slap.
“Sorry? You haven’t begun to be fucking sorry!” the first man yelled, the grind and cut of his voice plucking at my insides. “You think you can play a joke on me? Lie to me?”
“No! I’m not—I mean, it’s not a joke. And I-I’m not lying. She’s here!”
A pause, another thud, and then a yelp.
Realization hit. Because I knew that voice. The one handing out insults like Halloween candy. The one yelling, raging, that carried the same sound as dozens of claws grating on a chalkboard.
That voice was written into the deepest fabric of my nightmares.
“Stay on the goddamn ground, Sampson, or I’ll leave you there in pieces,” Kendrick Grimaldi snapped.
Their conversation, a struggle to catch at first, now became clear. The world sharpened as I shook off the fog. I pried open my eyes, catching a blurred glimpse of a pair of legs. He stood a few feet away with his hands fisted at his sides, screaming belligerently at three minions, his face red and visible even from this angle.
His nearness was akin to standing too close to a fire and feeling the burn but not being able to move away.
A human female might look at Kendrick and lick her lips. He was the tattooed bad boy of many erotic dreams. But for me he was straight out of a nightmare.
My taut nerves screeched at me to free myself.
After the last time Kendrick kidnapped me and brought me to the mortal realm, Nurse Julie had given me a glamour that was supposed to keep me safe from him. No matter the circumstances, she assured me, he’d never be able to abduct me again because he couldn’t see me or smell me or sense me.
And now I wondered if he hadn’t seen me yet.Can he sense me at all?
Perhaps not, but my heart sank anyway because unfortunately the glamour didn’t keep Kendrick’s wolves fromhunting me down. They had full capacity to see and smell and gut me.
They’d brought me to him.
My muscles ached from being trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey. Ropes held my wrists together and connected my wrists and ankles to the chair beneath me.
I shifted and twisted but the ropes refused to loosen. Sweat dripped along my brow bone down to the corner of my eye and scalded.
“She’s right there. Can’t you fucking see her, Sir?” one of the wolves asked. “We have her hogtied!”
Kendrick’s growl splintered through me with all the command of an alpha and my skin burst into goosebumps. “Watch how you talk to me.”
“You’re not getting it, Alpha,” a second man piped in. “She’s right in front of you. We have her tied. Right there. We’re not lying to you.”
Ahh… So maybe the glamour was working after all. Hope flared to life in my chest.
“Pointing isn’t going to help me see her.” Kendrick’s tone promised retribution for whatever game they played with him. “Will it? What aren’t you assholes getting? I see nothing but an empty chair!”
I shivered, the movement violent enough to tug at the ropes.Come on.
