CHAPTER 6
Grey was quiet. Too quiet.
He hadn’t struck Lyra as the talkative type, more the silent and brooding one, but he had at least said a few words to her, letting her see beyond the façade he maintained so well—the one that made it hard for her to get a clear picture of him.
He had frightened her in the cave when he had gone as still as a statue, clearly battling with himself about something. She had felt things about him loud and clear then, picking up a need in him that ran deep.
A need that was about her.
For a moment, a brief flash of time, she had thought he would succumb to it, but then he had given her clothes and surprised her by giving her as much privacy as he could rather than taking her dressing as a chance to look at her body. By the time she had donned the oversized shorts and t-shirt, he had been a different male, whatever urges that had come over him erased and gone.
Or at least suppressed.
Since they had left the cave over an hour ago, he hadn’t said a word.
Whenever she failed to contain a gasp or sharp intake of breath when her leg ached, he would glance at her, his ice-blue eyes asking whether she was alright, but he wouldn’t say a word. As soon as he saw she was fine, he went back to staring straight ahead, leading the way over the mountain.
He helped her from time to time, pulling her up steep rocks or assisting her down tricky sections of the narrow path where she might fall because of her leg.
Silent all the time.
Hell, it bothered her.
It shouldn’t, but for some reason, it did.
It struck her that she wanted to hear him speak, needed to be able to speak with him in return, because she was beginning to feel as if she was marching again, chained in a line with the other slaves. No one had said a word then, not even the bastards in charge of the procession. Every march had been done in silence, only the jangling chains breaking the quiet.
Like the chains that dangled from her heavy cuffs and clinked with each step she took.
Her throat tightened.
Pulse accelerated.
She stopped and squeezed her eyes shut against the onslaught of images, memories of the marches that blurred together, and then the cages, locked in them every time the group had rested at one of the camps.
She swallowed hard, lowered her head and clenched her fingers into tight trembling fists at her sides.
She wasn’t there now.
She wasn’t marching with other slaves, she was striding towards her freedom.
No. She was already free.
“Lyra?” Grey whispered, and she became aware of how close he was to her, his warmth surrounding her and that soothing but enticing scent of woods and earth, and summer rain filling her senses.
She shook her head, but she couldn’t find her voice to tell him that she was fine and he didn’t have to worry about her.
She felt the air shift, felt his need to touch her shoulder and his hand coming close to her, and then he stepped back instead, leaving her strangely cold inside and aching for him to have chosen the other route, the one where he would have placed his strong, large hand on her and held her.
Damn, this whole situation had messed her up.
She didn’t need a male. She didn’t want one. She certainly couldn’t bring herself to trust one again after what had happened to her.
Could she?
She opened her eyes and slowly lifted her head, skimming her gaze over Grey’s heavy black leather boots, up those long powerful legs encased in black fatigues, and across the delicious and tempting display of tight eight-pack abdominals and the broad slabs of his pectorals, to the strong line of his neck and his handsome face, with enticing full lips and those entrancing blue eyes.
Gods, she wanted to trust him.
But she couldn’t.
She didn’t need a male.
She had finally learned the lesson her mother and aunt had tried to teach her, first-hand experience driving it home that she couldn’t trust males. They wanted to subjugate her kind, wanted to turn her into a breeder for them, a slave to their every whim.
That wasn’t the life for her.
She was happy with the one she had forged for herself in her mountain home, far from the heat of Hell, a solitary existence that suited her and she loved.
“I’m fine now,” she murmured, lost in those glacial blue eyes that reminded her so much of home. “I just… the quiet… the walking… it made me think of… back then… when I was… caught… and whenever we moved location.”
His handsome face darkened, a storm gathering in his eyes, causing them to glow bright blue around his pupils, and then he drew down a slow breath and exhaled, and somehow pushed out all of the darkness with it.
Or pushed it all down inside him where it would continue to build until it became too much for him to contain.
“We can talk,” he said, and looked off to his left, down the steep path that wove down the side of the mountain to the valley below. He pointed to a place halfway across the valley basin. “It’s still a long walk to the village and another day to the portal from there. We can rest at the village… or here… if you’re tired.”
He struck her as a male who was always aware of others and their needs, and that tugged at the curious side of her.
“The village is fine,” she said, mostly because she wanted as much distance as possible between her and the slave camp, and she was aware it was still close, too close for comfort.
He started walking again, adjusting the pack on his back as he traversed a steep section of path.
He had good footing. Was he used to scaling mountains? The way he moved said that he was, and that he had spent a lot of time around mountains and knew the pitfalls to look for and how to move along the paths without causing any landslips.
It struck another chord in her, one that resonated and soothed her, and increased the small part of her that felt she could trust him.
“So, do you often come to Hell on your vacations?” She wasn’t sure why she had felt the need to ask him that in such a teasing manner. It was strange, completely the opposite of her usual straightforward manner.
Something about him made her want to tease him though.
Or was it something about her?
She wanted to feel more comfortable around him, and wanted him to feel comfortable around her. She wanted to feel closer to him, and not only because whenever she felt close to him the hell of her captivity felt further away, as if it was already a distant memory.
He laughed.
Sweet gods, it was warm and rich, sent a pleasant hot shiver down her spine and heated her skin.
“No. It’s my first time.” He glanced over his shoulder at her, the smile that tugged at his lips tugging at a part of her too. “I’m trying to help out my brother.”
“You have a brother?”
He nodded. “Two… but I’m not talking to one of them right now. I have a little sister too. Shit, she’s all grown up now though, off falling in love and finding her mate. The brother I’m here for, he did the same damn thing. Ran right into his fated one the night he escaped captivity.”
She stilled. “He was a captive?”
Grey stopped, turned back to her and nodded again. “Talon is strong though… a little like you. He’s shaking it off and getting on with his life now. I think having Sherry in it has helped him a lot… but he saw stuff in the place where he was held and it’s bugging him.”
“So you said you would look into it for him.” She stared at him as he rolled his shoulders in a casual shrug, as if the fact that he had come to Hell, to a place foreign and dangerous to him, for the sake of his brother was nothing.
“Can’t let curiosity kill that cat, I’m afraid. He’s my brother.”
He was more than that. She could see it in his eyes, in the love they held. They had lit up the moment he had started talking about his family. He loved them dearly, even the brother he apparently hated.
He was literally going to Hell and back for one of them.
Grey turned away from her and started walking again. “Since I had nothing keeping me at the pride anymore, I figured I would do a little travelling, and here I am.”
It was more than that.
She felt it in his words, in the meaning locked within them, and in him as he moved away from her. He was struggling. He was trying to act casual, to let something roll off his broad shoulders and not affect him, but it was. It was bothering him. Weighing him down.
He had nothing keeping him at the pride anymore.
The truth was, he didn’t want to be there.
He figured he would do a little travelling.
He was looking for the place where he wanted to be.
“What was it?” She started after him, limping down the mountain path, not wanting him to get too far away from her all of a sudden.
He looked back over his right shoulder at her. “What was what?”
“The thing your brother was curious about?”
“A door.”
She frowned at that. “A door?”
What sort of male was curious about a door?
“More specifically, what they were holding on the other side and why it needed two guards to protect it at all times.”
That made more sense. She would be curious about such a door too.
“When Talon’s mate broke back into the place with him to help him free the other captives, she found some information and one of the files she downloaded is definitely about the door. I’m following up the leads… but it’s harder than I thought it would be. I don’t speak the lingo down here, and it turns out not many of Hell’s residents speak English. I’m surprised you do.”
“I’m not a resident of Hell.”
He glanced back at her again. “You’re not?”
She shook her head. “I hate it here. I speak good English because I live in Norway.”
His silvery eyebrows rose. “Fancy that. So what brought you to Hell?”
“Idiocy. But we were talking about you. It must run in your blood.” When he gave her a quizzical look, she added, “The penchant for risking your neck to free captives.”
A hint of a smile touched his lips, but lasted only a second. “I just… with what happened to Talon, and then my sister Maya almost ending up a slave of some fucker that she had been promised to at birth… I just snapped when I saw the people in chains marching towards their doom.”
“There aren’t many in this world who would risk their life in order to free slaves they didn’t even know and would never see again… people who probably wouldn’t even thank them.” She was sure most people in the world would look in the other direction and just walk away.
Grey had done something about it instead.
He tried to shrug again, but it was stiff this time. “Some thanked me… I think… like I said, I don’t speak the languages down here.”
Lyra stepped towards him, narrowing the distance between them, and held his gaze. “Thank you, Grey.”
Rose coloured his cheeks and he looked away from her. “It was nothing.”
It was something.
Not only had he freed her, but he had carried her kicking and snarling away from that terrible place, and had tended to her wounds.
She had never met a male with a heart as big as his one.
He had saved her, and scores of other slaves. He had come to Hell to help his brother, and even though he didn’t speak the languages of this realm, he showed no sign of giving in and going home.
Oh hell, she was going to regret this, but she owed him, far more than she could ever repay him.
But this would be a start.
“I can speak the demonic tongue, ancient fae, and modern fae, and even some of the lesser known languages of Hell.”
He frowned over his shoulder at her and bit out, “Good for you.”
Meow.
This kitty had claws when he thought he was being rubbed the wrong way.
She wasn’t looking for a fight with him though.
“I’m saying I can help you.”
He stopped so suddenly she almost slammed into his back and instinctively pushed her hands out in front of her.
Planting them right on his bare hips.
Stupid backpack. Her face heated. If he hadn’t been wearing it, she probably would have aimed her hands at his back and not somewhere lower, and more dangerous.
Damn. His muscles were as firm as they looked beneath her palms.
His head bent, the wilder lengths of his short silver hair falling forwards as he looked down.
At her hands.
Lyra snatched them back.
“Why would you help me?”
The way he said that, filled with incredulity and confusion, had her heart softening again, and wanting to know more about him. Why did he find it so impossible that she might want to help him?
Why was he looking for a new place to call home?
What had driven him away from his pride?
“Because you helped me.” She kept her eyes locked on the back of his head, and her feelings steady, crushing the part of her that said she couldn’t trust him. She couldn’t trust any male.
She didn’t have to trust him in order to help him.
Once they were square, she would leave as planned, would head right through that portal and not look back.
“Fine,” he said, and he could have sounded more appreciative of her help.
She glared at the back of his head. He started walking again.
“We can start at the village. It’s the first location in the document I have.”
She wasn’t familiar with the village in question. She followed Grey down the rest of the way to the valley floor, mulling over everything he had told her. She was no longer sure that getting a clearer picture of him had been a good idea.
It painted him in too good a light.
It made it harder for her to keep her distance.
“We can rest here.” He jerked his chin towards a few black rocks that had obviously tumbled down the mountain at some point.
Lyra eased her bottom down against one of them and bit back a sigh as she lifted the weight from her legs. The bone in her left one had fully healed, but it was still sore and it ached from all the walking. She wouldn’t tell Grey that though. He would probably offer to carry her or something equally as noble and kind.
She wasn’t sure she could take it.
He pulled a cloth from his back pocket, huffed and sank down onto a boulder opposite her, resting there as he rubbed the cloth across his face and neck.
Gods.
She shouldn’t have looked at him.
Sweat glistened on his bare skin, tempting her eyes to go to places they shouldn’t, to traverse muscles that screamed of strength that called to her on a deep level, one where she wasn’t quite master. They tugged at every instinct, filling her head with images she shouldn’t be entertaining, but couldn’t quite block out.
He paused at his work and looked across at her, those soft blue eyes turning hard and dark with something that stoked the fire inside her, pulled harder at her and lured her towards him.
She was about to force herself to look away when he closed his eyes and frowned, lowered his head and fisted his hands in his lap.
What was he struggling against whenever he did that?
She feared the answer, even as part of her ached to know it.
When he finally opened his eyes again, they were calm and cool, the fire of passion gone from them.
He pushed onto his feet, jammed the cloth into his back pocket and turned side on to her, his eyes locking on the distance.
“We should keep moving.” He didn’t sound as if he wanted to do that. His deep voice was thick and hoarse, a low murmur that sent a tremor through her, a rolling wave that brought heat in its wake.
She forced herself to nod and eased back onto her feet.
Grey glanced down at them and looked as if he wanted to apologise again. He had offered his boots to her, but she had refused. They would be too big for her and she was used to walking barefoot now.
His socks were a blessing though.
They cushioned her feet enough that she didn’t feel the sharp bite of the rough ground as they began walking again, heading across the valley basin towards the village in the distance. She could just about make out the glow of flaming torches, a tiny flicker of gold in the dim light.
Returning to the mortal world, to her home, was going to feel like Heaven after being surrounded by so much gloominess for the past few months.
He adjusted his pace to match hers so they were walking side by side across the black land.
He was too quiet again, trapped by thoughts that she wanted to know, not because she wanted to pry into his private life but because she hated the dreadful silence and the rattling of her chains.
“We can find someone to break them,” he said, and she felt sure he had read her mind until she realised she was toying with the chains, had been tugging at them without realising it. “I need to get them off you.”
I need.
Not we need.
Most people would have spoken of them as a group, with a shared desire.
Grey had spoken only of himself, of a need that he had, one that looked as if it was eating away at him judging by the way he was glaring at the handcuffs, a flare of anger in his eyes.
He reached for them and she hissed at him, a reaction she couldn’t quite contain. His hand stilled, and he stood frozen for a moment and then backed off.
“Sorry.” She rubbed at the cuffs, shame sweeping through her.
He had only wanted to look at them, but she hadn’t been able to stop herself from lashing out at him, driven by the sudden fear that had gripped her.
Fear that something bad would happen to her as it had every time someone had touched her shackles.
He shook his head, his blue eyes flooding with a soft look. “I should be the one apologising.”
She closed her hand around her right cuff and held it near her chest as she battled for the words she wanted to say, the ones to reassure him that he had no reason to apologise to her. She had been the one to automatically assume he was going to hurt her. She was the one in the wrong.
“No, Grey. I… it’s just… whenever someone touched them…” Her voice grew tight and a weight pressed down on her chest.
She wasn’t strong enough to talk about it yet after all.
Grey gently shook his head again. “I won’t do it again. I didn’t mean to drag anything up. I was just going to see if I could break the chains off them.”
She looked down at her cuffs. “I managed to snap the chain in half, but the links nearer to the rings on them are stronger.”
Meaning he wouldn’t be able to break them.
He wasn’t like her. He was a feline shifter, and was powerful, but hellcats were the strongest of their kind. If she couldn’t break them, then he certainly wouldn’t be able to do it. Even with the shackles sucking on her strength, she was stronger than him.
“I’d like to try,” he said in a low voice, one laced with determination, and a promise that he wouldn’t hurt her.
He wasn’t going to let it go unless she gave him a shot at them. She could see it in his eyes, in the way he couldn’t take them off the chains. It tore her in two, ripped her between letting him try and fail to alleviate his need, and pushing him away to protect herself.
She wanted them gone too.
She tugged at them, weighing her options. If she gave him a shot at them, it might stop him from looking at them and reminding her that they were there.
She drew down a deep breath and followed it with another, trying to find some balance and courage, something she had always had before that cursed male had tricked her and sold her into slavery.
She could do this.
Grey would fail, and he would let it go.
When she returned home, she would find all the saws and tools she owned and get the damned things off her.
She released the death grip she had on her right shackle and held it out to him, her arm shaking as she edged it towards him. Her heart began a sickening fast rhythm against her chest.
His eyes leaped between the cuff and her. “You’re sure.”
She nodded, swallowed to wet her dry throat, and sucked down another breath. “Just… don’t touch my skin.”
Because she wasn’t sure she could take it and she feared what might happen. Her animal side was pushing, fear pulling it to the fore because it was her stronger form, one she could use to fight and would ensure her victory.
Grey wasn’t going to hurt her. She didn’t need to fight him.
He was going to make a few attempts on the chain and then he would give up.
“Close your eyes,” he whispered.
She did as he had instructed, shutting out the delicious sight of him and focusing on picturing her home in Norway, deep in the mountains, miles away from the humans and the busy mortal world.
That vision flickered and faded as she felt him take hold of the shackle, but she clawed it back again, breathed through the sudden rush of panic and managed to keep her feet planted to the black dirt. She could do this.
Grey wasn’t going to hurt her.
He drew down a deep breath.
He would make a few attempts on the chain.
He roared.
Her arm jerked to her left.
Chain hit rock with a startling clamour.
Her eyes flicked open.
She stared in disbelief at her right cuff, at the empty half-ring where the chain had been attached to it, and then at Grey.
He stood before her, chest straining, shoulders tensed and eyes dark.
Either she had been wrong about how strong she was with the cuffs inhibiting her, or Grey was far more powerful than she had imagined.
Far more powerful than he should have been.
“What species are you?” she whispered, afraid of his answer.
He wasn’t a hellcat.
But her heart leaped around in her chest as if he might be, her breath stuttering and refusing to come.
He took hold of her other cuff in one hand and the chain attached to it in his other.
“Tiger.”
He roared again as he pulled on the chain and shoved at the cuff, moving them in opposite directions. His fangs lengthened, his dark silver eyebrows meeting hard above his closed eyes, and every muscle on his chest and arms tensed in unison.
Lyra could only stare at him as he snapped the chain on her cuffs. It took effort, strength that left him visibly shaking as he tossed the chain away from them, but he managed it.
She had never met a tiger shifter before. Were they all as strong as Grey?
He stooped, picked up the other chain, and growled as he twisted away from her and threw it far into the distance.
Grey shifted to face her, looked down at her wrists, and exhaled hard. “That’s better.”
He was telling her.
Lyra looked down at her cuffs.
Damn, it felt good to see the chains gone.
She only wished she could find a way to get out of the shackles too. All in good time, she supposed. She would get them off her.
“Come on,” Grey said and tilted his head towards the village. “First round is on me as a thank you for letting me do that.”
She should be the one thanking him again. She stared at the metal bands around her wrists as she walked, following him to the huts and tents in the distance. If she had coin, or anything of worth, she would buy him as many rounds as he wanted.
“I think I should probably translate for you before we start drinking,” she said and he smiled over his shoulder at her. “Do they have food too?”
“Not sure… but if you like protein bars, I have plenty.” His smile widened and a light filled his eyes, one that warmed her.
He was relieved, happy that the chains were gone.
Just how big was that heart he was protecting?
She wanted to know.
She shook that away and focused on her plan, the one where she was meant to thank him for rescuing her by helping him talk with the locals and then leaving once he knew where he was meant to go next.
As they neared the boundary wall of the village, she lifted her head and looked around. A few ramshackle black huts stood in the centre of the low stone ring, with tents erected nearer to the wall. People of all different species moved around the village, some in groups of two or three, at least thirty in total. It was busy.
She had pictured it as a quiet group of thatched stone huts where people lived, but it looked more like a way station.
She limped forwards, and a few of the females and males coming and going looked her way.
An urge to fight swept through her and she struggled to control it, to bring it to heel and overcome it.
It was instinct, that was all. She was injured, felt weak and vulnerable, and so her instincts were making her react and want to lash out to protect herself.
“You’ll be fine,” Grey murmured quietly next to her, and she realised he had dropped back and had moved closer to her.
Had he sensed she was on edge?
“I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Lyra looked up at his profile. His dark silver eyebrows were low above those mesmerising blue eyes of his, which were dark as he studied the people moving around the village, focusing on those closest to her.
She looked at them too. They weren’t a threat to her. She had no need to fight them. Her eyes roamed back to Grey. Calm washed through her, pushing out the urge to bloody her claws.
He led her into the largest of the circular black stone huts. It was busy.
The urge to fight returned as people looked at Grey, and then at her. She bit back a growl as Grey ushered her through the cramped room towards the small bar, pushing his way through the crowd. She used him as a blocker, staying close to him so no one would brush against her. When they reached the stone bar, he offered her the only seat, and used his body as a shield, keeping her safe as he had promised.
That calm returned.
It dissipated the moment he hailed the bartender, a curvy brunette with a killer smile, enough cleavage to drown a man stuffed into a tiny leather corset, and dazzling colourful eyes made for luring males to their doom.
The second the female looked his way, Lyra saw red and the urge to fight flooded her, had her black claws extending and a snarl curling up her throat.
That left her cold.
The need to fight wasn’t hitting her whenever someone looked at her, born of a need to protect herself because she was injured.
It was striking her whenever he looked at a female.
Lyra gripped her knees as that hit her, stared at the black stone bar in front of her and struggled to find a valid reason for her reaction, one other than the obvious.
These females weren’t hellcats. She had no reason to want to fight them for territory, an instinct that ruled all female hellcats and was why she had avoided Hell and her own kind for most of her five hundred years.
Yet she couldn’t stop herself. She wanted to hurt them.
Kill them.
She tried to shake it off, fear rising inside her.
The female reached them and Lyra focused on her work, trying to shut out that dark need to fight that pushed her to lash out at the woman.
“I need information about a group of mortal hunters seen around this part of Hell,” Grey said.
Lyra translated it into the ancient fae tongue.
The female looked Grey over, stoking Lyra’s urge to fight the bitch, and then looked off to her left, towards a shadowy corner away from the bar.
“Speak with him.” The bartender pointed at a lone male seated at one of the tables.
Grey looked at Lyra.
“There’s a male who might be able to help us.” She slipped from the stool when Grey moved off, and managed to smile at the bartender as she said, “Thanks.”
Grey prowled through the busy room and she followed on his heels, flashing fangs at a few of the females who looked their way.
“You know of mortals in these parts?” Grey said, voice darker than before, and she wondered what had gotten into him.
She stepped around him.
Oh my.
The male the bartender had told her to speak with lounged in a wooden chair made for two, arms stretched along the back and his right ankle casually resting on his left knee. Black trousers hugged his long legs, polished leather riding boots reaching his knees, and a matching black tunic fitted snug to his lean figure.
Violet eyes lifted to her and the tips of his ears grew a little more pointed, poking out of his wavy blue-black hair.
An elf.
“I don’t speak his language,” she said to Grey, but he wasn’t listening.
He was glaring at the male.
“I do speak yours,” the elf offered and swept his right hand out towards the space beside him. “Come. Let us speak of mortals.”
Grey pushed past her and sat where the elf had wanted her to be, his broad frame shoving the male to one side, pinning him into the corner of the chair.
“Speak then, Elf.” He pulled a stack of folded papers out of his backpack and slammed them down on the table. “I need to know where this place is they speak of here.”
“Why not just skip straight to this entry?” The male pressed a finger to the paper further down the page. “I can tell you where this place is.”
Grey looked closely at the papers, some of the darkness leaving his eyes as he read whatever was on them at the point the elf had marked. She tried to see, but it was impossible to read when it was upside down to her.
She moved to her right, coming around the table.
Grey lifted his head and a strange sensation built inside her as he stared at her.
She stopped moving towards the elf to get a better angle on the papers and looked at Grey.
Right into eyes that were bright blue in the low light, glowing around his pupils.
An unsettling feeling went through her.
One that whispered Grey was experiencing the same dark need that kept trying to consume her.
The urge to fight.