Page 7 of Heart Cradle (The Melrathen Saga #1)

They had followed her before, knew her life, knew she was alone and terribly isolated.

The gang let her believe it, and she had believed, if only for a moment, fuck, she was an idiot.

She had ran from safety, ran from London, ran from the only place that had protocols, colleagues and backup, and sprinted straight into their net.

Maeve dragged herself towards the sink, half-crawling, knees slipping on the tiled floor.

Her palms swiped the ground, legs dragging behind like dead weight.

She reached the basin and clawed at it until she could rise just high enough to grip the edge of the cupboard.

She hauled herself up to face the mirror.

What she saw knocked the little breath she had from her.

Hair wild, tangled and sweat-matted. Eyes huge and rimmed with red, blown wide with panic.

A flush had bloomed across her chest and neck, too fast and too high, like her body was already preparing to bleed.

Her skin shone with sweat and tears and her lip was trembling.

She looked hunted, her reflection stared back like it didn’t recognise her.

As if it had already moved on, abandoning her to face all of this alone, and suddenly, it hit her, an absurd, desperate thought.

What is it with me and breakdowns in fucking bathrooms?

She had considered drowning in a scalding hot bath in her flat, and now here she was again, lungs failing her. Just in a different city, another country, but the same grave. She was either ill, or this was a trap, either way, she was going to die.

“This is it,” she rasped, voice cracking through the static in her head. “This is where I die. In bloody Lisbon. Classic, well done, Maeve. You absolute shitting twat.”

Her body shook, all over now. Tremors deep and uncontrollable, rooted in her spine.

She couldn’t tell if she was hot or cold, the world was both too sharp and too distant.

She wasn’t in control, the leash had tightened, it was pure panic.

It was fear that made her heart trip and falter like a dying engine.

It was the memory of being caught, of hands around her wrists, of screams in the dark and of the smell of her own blood in the air.

They had come to finish the job.

Then, like water lapping over her ankles, stillness. Not hers, not from within, it came from somewhere else. A presence of warmth, hands cupping her panic and stilling it. Gentle fingers moving through the chaos with care, trying to unravel her terror.

Eiran.

She felt him, not metaphorically, not the memory of him, not the resonance of his voice, but actually felt him.

Like a strand inside her chest had tugged taut, anchored to something real, to something impossibly steady.

He was not in the room, not in the holiday flat.

However he was there, somehow, like a weightless pressure on her skin, the gentlest hand pressed to her spine. A gentle tether.

Her panic did not vanish, but it moved. As though something knowing and calm had wrapped around the storm in her ribs.

Breathe

She did and her pulse slowed. Her breath, once ragged and shallow, began to find rhythm again.

In. Out. In. Out.

She splashed water on her face, again and again, each cold burst a small slap back into herself, she sat on the closed toilet lid, elbows to knees, wet palms pressed over her eyes.

He is not a threat.

Was she actually bonded, bonded, to a fae prick that looked like he belonged on the side of a coin and spoke like a mythic king carved from the stars?

Shit.

She let out a breath, the sound wasn’t a laugh, just pressure giving way.

Then she gathered herself, piece by piece, like dressing a wound.

Dress straight, hair brushed and clipped back, boots on and jacket zipped.

Her armour was assembled as she opened the front door of building with the kind of slow, wary care typically reserved for ancient tombs in badly written adventure novels, half-expecting flames, blades, or worse.

There he was, sitting on the steps, legs long, arms resting on his knees. Talking softly to a scrappy street cat curled in his lap. "You are a queen," he murmured to the cat. "A true terror of the back alleys. Tell me, do they tremble before you, your Grace?"

Maeve stared at him and Eiran turned. There was no surprise on his face, just warm relief, with a hint of sheepishness and perhaps a flicker of uncertainty that vanished too quickly to be sure. That bloody voice, smooth, dark, and entirely too pleased with itself.

"Before you say anything, yes. I’m fully aware of how I look right now. Lurking and whispering to a cat." He gave her a slow smile, deliberately cautious, like a man standing in a minefield barefoot and trying to charm the terrain.

"I debated knocking. Then I saw this magnificent creature," he nodded to the cat, "and figured I had a better chance of being forgiven if I looked like a lunatic and not a threat."

Maeve crossed her arms. "Did you follow me?"

His brows lifted. "No, I didn’t need to. You were…" He paused, searching for the right word. "Loud, not literally, just... everywhere. Like a pull in my chest I couldn’t ignore."

She narrowed her eyes. "That’s not comforting."

"No," he agreed, tilting his head, voice velvet-smooth and unapologetic. "But it is honest. I warned you, I’m terrible at polite lies."

He glanced down at the cat again, scratched gently beneath her chin now. "Though she, at least, seems to find me incredibly charming."

Maeve said nothing. He looked up at her again, slower this time. Like he didn’t want to spook her, as if he was asking her to stay before she could bolt again. "I just needed to know you were alright," he said softly. "Not pushing, not asking anything. Just here, just me."

Her lip twitched trying to deflect. "Magnificent creature? A street cat."

"She is a lady," he said, affronted. "We were discussing turf disputes and fish bones. Until you rudely interrupted."

Her lip twitched again. “God help me.”

He set the cat down gently. "I wanted to give you space. I did, but the pull was too strong. Not to the Chain, to you. I swear I will not hurt you." He rose slowly, palms open. "Forget the Chain. I would destroy the fucking thing it if it meant you felt safe."

She stared at him, at the sincerity that glowed like a second skin and she zipped her jacket up higher. "No I…I think I need the Chain.”

Eiran raised his eyebrows, but said nothing .

“You touched me and flipped my entire life inside out," Maeve said, flatly. "Do you have any idea what that feels like?"

He met her gaze. "Yes."

"Do not say that unless you mean it."

"I mean it." A pause. "I am a fae prince. I waited three hundred and forty-nine years for my bound, Maeve.”

Maeve gave a small harsh laugh, “349 years?”

“We have very long lives. Which means far too long to imagine how it might go, meeting her… you. I’ll admit, I didn’t picture the panic, or the fleeing, or so much bloody swearing.”

"Don’t," she warned, but a true laugh cracked out of her anyway.

“I’m yours, but still myself. You’re mine, but still you.

That’s what this is, we’re us.” He caught her exasperated look and winked, shamelessly.

“I’m not here to trap or trick you. I just want to know you, to help you.

If you decide that’s not what you want, then I’ll step back.

You can tell me to get fucked and I’ll leave. I swear it.”

Maeve’s heart did something traitorous, something soft, and she let it.

Just this once, just to see how it felt.

She blew out a breath and sat beside him on the step.

The cat climbed into her lap as though she had always belonged there and for the first time in a long time, Maeve did not feel like prey, she just felt watched over.

Which was worse, in some ways, because she could survive being hunted, she had survived being hunted, but she did not know if she could survive being seen.