Page 18 of Monster’s Redemption (Monsters in the Mountains #9)
Chapter One – Lyric
It was colder than she’d expected as Lyric ran across the open field, the frozen grass crunching under her feet. The trees had blocked some of the wind before, but she was exposed in the field and thinking twice about the wisdom of her decision to run.
Maybe if she had submitted they would have spared her, and she wouldn’t have found herself gasping freezing air into straining lungs.
Lyric had never expected to leave the village she had called home. Her father was the Chief, and the alpha he had promised her to as a mate was someone highly placed and well respected. Though he wasn’t someone she would have chosen for herself since he was much older, she was content with him knowing that her father could have picked someone far worse. She had to believe he was doing what was best for her. Lyric had looked forward to their mating in the spring, once her first estrous came, since being a mother was all she had ever wanted to be.
The raiders had changed all of that. The pleasant, unexciting life she had envisioned disappeared with the smoke in the air. Watching her father’s throat slit in front her, and then finding her intended already dead when she tried to turn to him for help, Lyric had no other choice but to run and hope none of the raiders tracked her.
That was why she had left the cover of the trees to cross the field. There was a river she hoped to use to break her trail, but with how cold she already was, she wasn’t sure she could force herself to step into the water. Dying of hypothermia was not the way she wanted to go.
Pushing on as fast as she could run, her tired legs pumped until Lyric came to a sudden halt at the water’s edge. The crust of ice along the bank made her hesitate to run into it as she had planned to break her trail.
Forced to think fast, she followed along the edge of the bank and prayed that no one was tracking her, but it didn’t take long for her to lose that last bit of hope as she heard rough male voices calling to each other in the distance. They weren’t in view yet, but they were close enough that she didn’t need to strain to catch their words, though she couldn’t understand them.
Gathering the last of her courage, Lyric waded into the water, gasping as the chill stole her breath. Already shivering, she forced herself to slog in deeper so the water would carry her scent away. Knee deep in frigid water, she wasn’t able to move as fast as she had on dry land, with the rocky bottom and the numbness seeping into her legs and feet.
Tears running silently down her chapped cheeks, she kept moving upriver until a rock turned beneath her waterlogged boot and pitched Lyric into the deeper water running through the center. Attempting to force air into lungs trapped behind muscles seizing from the cold, she couldn’t get her feet beneath her again, and was swiftly pulled back towards her village. The river passed just outside the edge of the village, and her only hope was that no one was watching the water when she passed by.
Giving in to the pull of the current, Lyric began moving with it instead of fighting it. Propelling herself as fast as she could in the frigid water, she tried to make as little noise as possible as she moved past the edge of her home.
She thought she was doing well until something bumped into her shoulder. Looking into the blank eyes of a boy she had known since childhood, Lyric couldn’t stop the scream that escaped her throat as she struggled to distance herself from his body.
Shoving against it to propel it away from her, she realized he wasn’t the only one floating limp and unseeing in the river. She thrashed to get away from the corpses lining the water along the village, but pain bloomed in her left shoulder, causing her to swallow a mouthful of river water.
Sputtering, she felt herself being pulled towards the riverbank as she choked on another scream. When she looked behind her, there was a large figure holding the line attached to the arrow sticking out the front of her shoulder. Lyric tried to fight against the pull, but between the cold and the injury preventing the use of her left arm, her body was giving up. There was no strength left to fight as he reeled her in like a fish caught on a line.
One massive hand wrapped around her upper arm, lifting her from the water as she screamed again from the pain of her weight pulling on the injury. When he reached out his other hand, she saw the glint of light along the edge of the long knife he held, and she accepted her fate. She hadn’t expected to live through the night anyway.
Going limp in his hand so he could get it done faster and not cause her more pain, Lyric barely had the energy to be surprised when he paused, pulling her closer to sniff her hair. Unable to do anything more than shiver, she didn’t resist as he held her against his body and nuzzled her throat, licking over the pulse in her neck.
At the point where she was oblivious to anything but the warmth of his body, she snuggled closer to him as he lifted her limp body into his arms and strode back towards the village, his musky scent wrapping around her and telling her muddled brain that she was safe.