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“We need to leave now.” I turn to the captain. “Rally all the troops. Have them meet us at the gates.”

“We’re going in hard?” Wolf asks, casually springing a set of lethal claws from his right hand and retracting them again.

“We are.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Fawn

The sound of dripping water rouses me. A groan escapes my lips as I try to move—every part of me hurts. I’m on a narrow cot, a rough blanket beneath me and another covering me. No, not a blanket, a large cloak.

There is a lamp somewhere behind me… A low snort alerts me to the fact that I’m not alone. The shuffle of footsteps. Another snort.

The hairs rise at the back of my neck, even as the familiar scent calms my racing heart.

Feet enter my periphery—broad, naked,giantfeet. I lift my eyes up and up over thick muscular thighs… my gaze snags at the huge cock hanging thick and heavy between his slightly spread legs… I gulp and continue up over thick abdominals, a great barrel chest, and brawny shoulders until I reach Eiden’s beastly stag’s head, the antlers so immense that they barely skim the ceiling of the small room.

He crouches, and his huge hand, bruised and split, reaches to cup my chin. “How do you feel?” The words rumble out likedistant thunder around his stag jaws. His eyes are a dazzling winter blue and seem to whirl like a storm.

“Sore,” I croak.Broken.“Thirsty.”

He rises, moves to the side of the room where the shadows are deep, and returns with a ladle full of water. Crouching again, he helps me to sit so I can gulp some down, watching me intently. His features are so strange and yet compelling, a stag’s head, but the angles are all wrong. When I look at him, I see an animal, but I also see Eiden.

“I’m sorry. I was too slow.” He looks away. Rising, he tosses the ladle back into the bucket, where it lands with a splash.

“Eiden, you do not need to be sorry for anything. I understand how hard that was for you—that you were terrified of hurting me.”

He snorts out a breath, still not meeting my eyes, his giant form towering over the cot where I sit. “It is my fault you were hurt. I shouldn’t?—”

“It istheirfault I was hurt,” I say firmly. “You just saved me.”

He makes a low, rumbling noise that makes me smile. How can such a huge, fierce creature present this unexpectedly humble facade?

He finally looks at me again. “Do you think you could shift?”

“No.” It would help with my injuries, although it would also sap what little energy I have. “My doe is quaking. She will not show herself while we are in this place… We are still in Wormwood, I presume?”

He nods, his immense bulk seeming to suck in the small amount of light. “We are.”

My throat is throbbing, but the bleeding seems to have stopped. My fingers reach tentatively toward my throat, finding a bandage there.

“Do not touch,” he rumbles.

I take my hand away. “Where exactly are we in Wormwood? Do… do you know how to get out?”

“Deep underground. Safe, for now.”

“What happened?” I ask. “After you…”

“I killed them all,” he says, turning in profile, the light from the small lamp setting his wounds into stark relief.

My breath leaves me in a hiss. “Eiden, your back.”

A crossbow bolt is still embedded in his upper back. Another, this one with the end snapped off, is in his shoulder. Both weep a trail of blood. The tips are likely metal. He cannot shift to heal. He might not be able to either way in his state of heightened alert, much like my doe.

His head swings back to face me.

“Should I… Can I pull them out?” I ask.