Rescued by Ryland: Deep River Shifters ( Book 1) by Lisa Daniels (32)

Chapter Two

Thoughts bombarded Alyssa's mind.  She saw her brother smiling at her over the other side of a dining table, with their parents watching them eat.  She remembered being wrapped up at night and being told stories about the monsters that roamed the dark, always defeated by brave heroes and heroines who risked their lives to save others from suffering. 

Then, she saw the blizzard sending whorls of snow over her parent's gravestones, the drab granite crumbling apart as darkness ate at it, tore away the foundations of what should have been untouchable.

She hated the Shadows, and the monsters that waited for them in the dust ridden corners, hated her brother who left her alone in that little house, expecting her to just sit there and be patient.  Stupid, stupid Erlandur.  He should have known better than to leave her behind.

She remembered the first time she picked up a sword, and how her brother had laughed at her, because it was too heavy and dragged along the ground.

She trained hard after that, with fight after fight, slash after slash.  Even with her brother mocking her along the way.  Even when she still didn't have the skill to follow him.

Hadn't trained her enough to cope with betrayal and cold weather, however.

The eyes.  The monster in the forest. 

She woke up.  Soft sheets lay under her, warm and soothing to her skin.  Nothing like the blanket of cold she had been subjected to.

A fire blazed on one wall of the room, hemmed in by stone tiling, with flickering wood embers in the container, and the smoke escaping through a chimney.  Alyssa blinked herself more awake, dimly registering the sight in front.  She was in a room, similar to the structure of the ones in Blood Moon Inn.  Snow splatted the window outside the room, and Alyssa watched the flakes with a shiver of memory, from how close that snow came to burying her corpse in the drifts.

Come to think of it, how was she alive?  Who had saved her?

Who had saved her from the beast with the yellow eyes?

Parts of her were still thawing out, not quite at the optimal stage of warmth, though there was no longer that bizarre inflamed sensation upon her skin.  She remembered, in a rush of horror, how she had actually started taking off her clothes.  In the cold. 

Speaking of clothes... she checked her body, and saw she wore what looked like snug fur robes – but a completely different set from what she started out with, suggesting her friendly rescuer had also stripped her snow wet clothes off and draped her in new ones.

A knock on the bedroom door startled her.  She eyed it as if it were a hostile snake, waiting for it to pounce.

“Come in,” she croaked, through a weak, rasping throat.  The door creaked open, and a man stepped through, holding a tray of food and drink.  The first thing Alyssa noticed about the man was his eyes.

She squinted at him suspiciously as he laid down the tray on the side table by her bed.  In the candlelight, the shadows cast over his strong, masculine face gave an eerie vibe.  Thick lips hid behind a black beard and mustache, and when he bared his teeth in a smile, she noticed how pointed the canines were.

“You?”  She said.  “You rescued me?”

The man with the yellow eyes stood over her bed, appraising her looks.  His eyes traced over her blonde hair, which stood out in the north, where black hairstyles were the norm.  He ran a tongue over his lips – a strangely alluring gesture that made her follow the movement with fascinated nervousness. 

“It's not often we get human women foolish enough to come dying on our doorstep,” the man said, his voice a rumbling engine of amusement.

Alyssa recoiled when he reached down to her, his huge hand brushing her forehead.  “Don't touch me, monster.”

The man frowned disapproval.  “A simple 'thank you for saving my life' might suffice from you, human.  I also take offense at being called a monster.”

“What's the point in being grateful if I'm going to die anyway?”

At this, the man looked baffled, giving Alyssa pause to her instant reaction to anger.  “Why do you think you're going to die?”

“You're not going to eat me?”

“...  Why would I?  I rescued you.  My sole interest is in making sure you recover.”

Alyssa squinted at him.  Then, she saw another man walk past with the same yellow eyes, and he gave a curious glance into the room before vanishing out of sight.

“Human, you should focus on recovering first.  Eat.  Drink.  Rest.”  The man waved towards the offering brought to her.  His handsome, if gaunt face, twitched in an expression of friendly care.  “Then I will show you around to the rest of our abode.  You are in wolf territory now.  You will be safe here, from the wilds, and the demons.”

“Wolf?”  Alyssa stared at the man for a while.  She struggled to grasp what was happening.  The conflict between the obvious fact she was being looked after, marred with the vision of the shaggy beast she had seen stalking her in the snow.  “You are a werewolf?”

“We are,” he corrected.  “The Lunar Wastes belongs to our kind.”

“Monsters,” Alyssa said.

The werewolf bared his sharp canines in a disdainful smile.  “Human, you should really stop with that tag.  We are far from the monsters here.”  Something twitched in his jaw.  “I see you need more time to process.  I will be back in a few hours.”

He got up and made to leave.  Alyssa's heart throbbed painfully.  She didn't mean – she didn't want – “Wait.  What is your name?”

The man hesitated, yellow eyes betraying nothing of his thoughts or intent.  “Kain.  Just Kain.”

“I'm Alyssa Malgrave.”

Kain nodded.  “Thank you.”

When he left, Alyssa felt strangely bereft.  She had just snapped away the only person willing to talk to her.  The person who had saved her.  Monsters didn't save people.  What an idiot.  Probably still suffering from frostbite or something.  Her mind had been addled from the cold, after all.  How did cold do that, anyway?  Why did it make you delirious, and burn?  Alyssa remembered the incident in discomfort.

I was so woefully unprepared.  What did I expect to achieve? She stared at her hands, before checking the room and catching no sign of her blade.  I thought... I don't know.  I thought I could turn up at the Lunar Wastes and he'd be there.  I had no idea what was in front of me.

I'm a foolish little girl with a sword.

Nothing more.

A foolish little girl apparently surrounded by werewolves.  Beyond the werewolves lay the wind-blasted Lunar Wastes.  Beyond the Wastes towered the Fractured City.

The snow continued falling outside, never seeming to stop. Every flake reminded her of the death that awaited her outside.

Alyssa Malgrave had spent the last four years training, in preparation to find her brother.

Now she didn't know what to do.

She ate some of the food, then drifted back into slumber.