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Beasts as big as the horses we rode.

There was no time to even be afraid or scream or have any kind of reaction because they came from between the trees on all sides and at the same time.

Dark fur covered them, and monkeys were the closest animal I knew to how they looked, if monkeys had longer faces and fangs that fell below their chins, eyes made out of red glitter and horns over their heads as thick as my forearms, curved toward the front.

The sound of them made my heart stop beating for a good moment. I saw it all in slow motion—how the guards, all five of them, jumped off their horses and produced golden swords from underneath their jackets. I saw how they moved, so swiftly, and charged the monkey monsters, stabbed and cut them with those shiny blades while Helid shouted at the top of his voice: “Protect the mortal at all costs!”

He was still on the back of his horse when he raised both hands toward the sky and said a word I had never heard before. It wasn’t English or any other kind of language I’d ever heard, but a bright ball of light shot from the palms of his hands, so hard and so fast it nearly knocked him right off the horse.

The sky exploded in a golden shower of sparks like fireworks or like a beacon that could probably be seen from everywhere around us.

Then, my horse moved, and time regained its usual pace.

The horse neighed and jumped to the side because one of those beasts had clawed it on its back leg and I hadn’t even heard it approaching.

“Run, Aro! GO! ”

Helid jumped off his horse and toward me. He slapped my horse on the side of his neck with all his strength.

Aro neighed again and I screamed when he rose on his hind legs for a second. The look in Helid’s eyes as he reached for a pair of very big knives that had been hidden underneath his jacket told me everything I needed to know—I was going to die soon.

Then he spun around and went to meet one of the beasts that was coming for him, and Aro ran forward, followed by three of the other horses.

It had been comfortable to ride on the back of this horse when he was walking, but now he was running, and there was no way I wasn’t going to fall off this saddle. The view in front of me changed, became darker, and my ears were full of the sound of swords cutting, and beasts making this screeching noise—not a roar, but something closer to a scream.

I made the mistake of looking back.

Mayhem. Blood and teeth and swords and golden magic in the air, screams and roars and body pieces.

And a beast was crawling on the ground, using the claws that tipped its paws to drag itself closer to me, those eyes, red and wide and fucking terrifying, on me.

Every inch of my body was suddenly numb. My heart squeezed in my chest, and I stopped breathing, the air getting stuck in my throat.

Then the horse turned a sharp corner, and it was a fucking miracle I didn’t fall off. The scream that came out of me could have been louder than those roars, and it made the horse run twice as fast.

I couldn’t hold on.

Leaves on my face, branches against my legs and arms, as if they were trying to yank me off the horse’s back. Darkness everywhere, ahead and to the sides, because we’d gone too far and the golden light of the fae magic no longer reached here.

“ Stop, stop, STOP! ” I thought I shouted, except I kept moving up and down, slamming against the saddle, and it hurt everywhere.

The horse didn’t stop.

I knew I wasn’t going to make it. There was no way I could hold on for much longer, and if I fell from this high up at this speed, I’d die. If I didn’t break my neck against the ground, surely I’d slam onto a tree. If the horse didn’t step on me or kick me when I fell, then that beast that had been crawling on the ground for me would surely get to me eventually.

Where would I even go?!

The panic made black dots explode in my vision.

I should have never come here…

A different kind of darkness suddenly exploded all around us, swallowed every single tree in sight, and the horse finally stopped running.

The next moment, I found myself with my arms wrapped around the horse’s neck, holding on for dear life. He’d been about to throw me off him when he stopped abruptly, and I had no idea how I managed to stop myself, but I was no longer sitting on the saddle. I was sitting on the very base of his neck, arms around him, legs tight to his sides as he neighed and slammed his hooves to the ground, trying to shake me off himself.

I was going to hit the ground any second now, and die for real, when…

We heard this sound—like a whistling coming from far away.

The horse stopped moving, stopped neighing. My muscles squeezed around him even tighter, and though I wanted nothing more than to close my eyes, I couldn’t. My instincts didn’t allow it because the forest had been right there one second, and now there was only darkness. A deep, unnatural darkness .

I searched it with my eyes, breathing heavily, unable to stop or stay silent. The horse was looking about, too, his muscles as tense as mine, a low growl coming from his throat.

Then we both saw the silhouette ahead, somehow darker against the black background. I held my breath, dug my fingers into the sides of the horse’s neck, still certain I was going to die.

A heartbeat later, he stepped forward, and the darkness slowly slipped back from his face, as if it were revealing him, clinging to his skin, reluctantly letting go of him while he came closer and closer, his eyes on the horse’s face.

A man.

It was a man, not a beast coming to devour me.

A man who looked like he came from a place where both dreams and nightmares were made, the finest kind, silky smooth and terribly intense at the same time. He was tall, shoulders broad and hips narrow, and his hands were big. I noticed because he’d raised one toward us and held up his index finger as if he wanted me—or the horse—to stand still.

If he only knew that I couldn’t move if I tried, especially when I took in his face.

Hair as dark as the darkness around us, much darker than the night sky, short but not too short, with strands falling over his forehead and his left eye. The tips of his pointy ears peeked through it just fine, though. He looked at the horse from under his lashes, and his eyes were the most unusual blue I had ever seen, an indigo blue with shimmer in it, which could be a trick of the darkness somehow because it looked perfectly unreal. His skin was smooth and healthy, cheeks clean-shaven. His nose was straight and slightly pointy, his lips rich with color, as if he had worn some kind of a lip tint just now that left behind the perfect mauve color, wrapped with an almost completely white outline.

My mind was wiped clean. Not entirely sure why I was so caught up in his appearance—other than the fact that he looked like someone had made him in a lab according to my every preference with a technology that was light-years ahead of ours—but I couldn’t get enough. I couldn’t even get my eyes to blink while I absorbed every inch of him, like this tattoo he seemed to have on the left side of his neck that went underneath his shirt, which was black and a bit loose, and it dipped into a slight V below his neck. The urge to see what was underneath was so insanely irrational it surprised me even in this situation.

But when he was close enough that he could touch the horse’s face, his eyes finally moved to me.

His reaction confused me. He looked surprised to find me there—those indigo eyes widened, pupils dilated, easy to notice. His lips, those gorgeous lips parted, and for a good second, he was just as frozen in place as me.

Maybe he hadn’t known I was on the back of this horse? Maybe he thought it was just the horse running wild around the woods?

The horse moved slightly back, growled deeper, and since my hands were right under his neck, I felt the sound of him vibrating up to my arms.

“Steady…”

The man spoke.

My insides squeezed. His voice was hushed, not loud but not a whisper—like a secret.

And those eyes locked on mine again. “Don’t move.”

Yes, he’d found the exactly right spot between talking and whispering. If I wasn’t about to fucking die right now, I’d have been turned on. He sounded like sex .

And why was I so obsessed with how he sounded ? I was about to fall off the back of a giant horse or get swallowed by these shadows that were everywhere around us or get eaten by beasts that looked like deformed monkeys— or get killed brutally by an abnormally gorgeous guy!

Breathe, breathe, breathe…

The man came closer, and he made to touch the horse, who moved us back a step and neighed again. My eyes squeezed shut then. I imagined him spinning around and jumping on his back and front hooves, trying to get me off.

“Steady, Aro,” said the man.

My heart stopped for a beat. He knew the horse’s name.

“Stop squeezing him. Try to get back on the saddle,” he said, and his voice was definitely the stuff of dreams—no way was he real.

“I…I can’t,” I choked out. Couldn’t he see how tense this horse was? He was this close to trying to throw me off, and I had no more strength left in me to hold on, damn it!

“You have to. Easy,” he said, and he’d come even closer, both his hands on the sides of the horse’s face, close enough to me that I saw every line and every detail of his skin. Like this freckle just below the apple of his right cheek. And a long, faded cut on his jawline.

“He’s trying to throw me off,” I said, but an entirely new set of emotions was coming over me now and my muscles, against all odds, were starting to loosen up a bit.

“He’s just scared. He’s wounded.” The man held my eyes. “ Slowly .”

It was a damn order.

I really, really didn’t like to be ordered around.

“Listen, mist—” I moved.

I sat up higher, pushed my hands against the horse’s neck, and I tried to steady myself, but it was too late.

The horse jumped .

He jumped, first on his front hooves, then his back ones, and he threw me in the fucking air like I weighed nothing.

The regret was automatic. Damn it, I should have held on. I should have kept my arms locked around his neck because look at me now—and I couldn’t even scream!

The horse moved forward. I fell.

With my eyes closed and my teeth gritted, I braced myself for impact. It all happened so fast that I didn’t even get to say a single prayer to not break my neck and die.

Instead, a split second later, arms were around me, and a body that could have been as strong as the ground. My neck didn’t break—the fall hadn’t been half as long as I’d thought because he’d caught me.

The stranger with the indigo eyes had caught me, and I had already wrapped my arms around his neck in pure instinct.

He was there and I was alive.

Every last bit of strength in my body gave up on me at the same second. I passed out before I could even think the words thank you.