Page 13 of Fractured Fates

A sadness hangs heavy over me. I’m leaving my home behind. Maybe I didn’t have the best or the most exciting existence here, but it was my home. Yet another one abandoned. The sadness weighs me down as we weave through the forest, only clearing when we reach the highway and the man in black leans on the accelerator, speeding us along the road.

This bike can go twice as fast as mine and the speed sends adrenaline shooting through my blood. I grip his waist tighter, my fingers digging into hard muscle.

There’s something exciting about having the man between my legs, about my body pressed to his. Beneath that scent of the forest, he smells masculine and dangerous and it buzzes in my throat.

I’ve read enough books to know that falling for your kidnapper is a huge and predictable cliché. I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to crush on the first man who comes crashing into my life. I’m not that pathetic. But I can see that promise is going to be hard to keep when he covers my hand with his and then strays down to squeeze my thigh.

They’re simply touches of reassurance. He’s making sure I’m okay. But my stomach flutters anyway.

He’s good to his word and we take the back roads, avoiding the main ones. The two men ride side by side, occasionally shouting to one another but I can’t hear their words over the rumble of the engines.

After a couple of hours, we swing into the parking lot of some run-down diner. My body is stiff and I want nothing more than to jump off this bike, roll my neck and stretch out my back. But I’m chained to the machine. I pull off the helmet instead, shaking out my hair.

“Are you going to unchain me?” I ask. “Or are you leaving me here while you eat?”

The other man swings his leg over his bike and swaggers towards me. He stops right by my side and peers menacingly into my eyes, daring me to say more. Then he lifts his hand and the chains slither away.

With a groan, I slip off the bike, every bone in my body crunching. I’m still sore from my nights in the forest and my first run in with the man in black. I have bruises littering my body and the burns aren’t as well healed as the cut.

“Hold out your hands,” the second man says.

“What?” I ask.

“Hold out your hands.”

“Why?”

With an irritated huff, he takes both my wrists in his grip, forcing them together, despite my attempts to pull them apart, then he conjures a set of handcuffs from thin air.

“You know if I wanted to run,” I sneer, “I could do it with my hands bound.”

He smirks back at me. “It’ll make it harder though, won’t it?”

My magic is still depleted from my battle with the man in black, but I call on what little I have to test the strength of these cuffs. They’re magical and I don’t have the power right now to crack them open.

The man in black jumps down from his bike and, slapping his friend on the shoulder, they turn together and walk in the direction of the diner.

“I’m not leaving my pig out here,” I call after them.

“Pig?” the man in black’s friend says.

The man in black simply shakes his head and stomps back to the bike.

He opens up the box, scoops Pip out and dumps him in my arms.

The other man’s top lip curls in disgust. “What the fuck is that?”

“My pig.”

He peers at the man in black. “Why the fuck does she have a pig?” The man in black shrugs. “Is she mentally unstable?”

The man in black looks me straight in the eye. “Possibly.”

“I am here, you know,” I mutter. “Pip is my pet and–”

“You’re gonna need to cover that disgusting thing up,” the second man says. “They won’t let it in.”

“Him,” I say, resisting the urge to stick my tongue out at him. He tosses his head and strides away.