Page 6 of Bought By the Cerberus
She’d paid a steep price for her kindness. Everyone she’d ever known had rejected her. They’d all glared at her, spouting outrageous accusations. And in the center of it all, there was the satyr. In here, he wasn’t harmless and dead. He loomed larger than life, his aristocratic features twisted with malice.
I felt her terror as the mob turned violent. Felt her desperate courage when she fought back with his own broken horn. Callista had refused to beg even while dying. She’d made her enemy pay in blood.
“Die with your cursed threads, barren whore!” The memory-Syagros charged, horn lowered to pierce her heart.
“Come and get me!” She raised his broken horn, brave to the bitter end.
I forced myself between them at the crucial moment. The horn meant for Callista punched through me instead, and agony beyond description exploded through my borrowed form. My ribs cracked like kindling, Syagros’s horn tearing through me in a way it never would have in life.
Her grief poured into me like poison, years of shame and self-loathing so suffocating my lungs seized under the strain. I absorbed it all, took her suffering into myself until the memory could no longer destroy her.
“Mine to protect,” I gasped, and against all odds, Callista saw me.
She stared at me with wonder and disbelief. “Who are you?”
“The one who will always stand between you and your pain.”
As I bore the weight of her agony, the nightmare edges of the memory began to soften. The threatening colors faded to normal. The demonic satyr shrank back to human size. Peace settled over the scene like snow covering old wounds.
I pulled my consciousness back to the present. Sweat matted my fur despite the cool air, but it had worked. Her life force was stabilizing, growing stronger with each heartbeat.
Her eyes fluttered open, unfocused but beautifully alive. “You’re... warm...”
Relief crashed through me so hard my claws shook. “Stay with me. Can you hear my voice?”
Her fingers traced my muzzle with a gentleness I’d done too little to earn. “I remember... you stepped in front...”
I covered her small hand with mine, amazed by how fragile she felt against me. “I’ll always protect you.”
She was a human. She didn’t have the same instinctive knowledge of the connection we shared. But the memory we’d shared had created something between us. Something almost as powerful as the gift the weave had given us.
Her breathing deepened, and she focused on my face. “Who are you?”
“Theron. And you’re safe now.”
The trust in her eyes nearly undid me. After everything she’d endured, she looked at me without fear. More than that - she looked at me like I was her salvation.
Maybe I was.
Phonos cleared his throat, interrupting our exchange. “Impressive intervention, but she needs immediate transport to proper healers. My wings can have her in Asphodelia within the hour.”
Did he think I was stupid? Did he think I wouldn’t understand what he was doing? Phonos wasn’t offering efficient transport. He was making a claim.
My inner beast roared to lunge at him, to claw that too-beautiful face of his open. Instead, I gathered her carefully against my chest. “Flight will tear her wounds open. I’ll be the one to carry her home.”
She fit perfectly in my arms, just like I’d known she would. How dare Phonos challenge that claim?
Phonos tilted his head in an almost bird-like gesture. “Your attachment is clouding your judgment. She’s worth more than our entire harvest combined. The swiftest possible care serves her best interests.”
He wasn’t wrong, but I did not believe him either. Nothing he said or did would be in Callista’s best interest, and she knew that. “Don’t leave me,” she whispered, her voice barely audible.
“Never.”
The single word carried more weight than any argument. Phonos heard it too - the absolute commitment that meant this conversation was over.
His face twisted with frustrated fury. His purple eyes flared crimson in the way they only ever did when he was in a rage. “This isn’t over, Theron. When the Moirae learn how you prioritized sentiment over her survival...”
“Tell them.” I turned my back on him, shifting her weight so she could rest more comfortably against my shoulder. “Tell them I chose her life over your ambition.”
