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He blinked his bright green eyes guilelessly at her. “I am uncertain how you think I should proceed, then. All I have is you. If you do not represent me, I will eventually be forced to level the city, anyway. Here, with you by my side, they at least have a chance.”
She groaned, slumping in her chair. “You’re really going to make me do this, aren’t you?”
“It is your idea,” he purred.
“Yeah, but I wasn’t planning on it being me executing it,” she muttered. She rubbed a hand over her face. “You really don’t have a single friend who might be able to pass for human?”
He hesitated briefly. “There is a wind spirit that can make itself appear human-ish. So long as he keeps his magic under control… and does not become angry,” he amended. “Or get overly excited. He can be unpredictable when he is excited, and I fear that he is an excitable sort.”
“Perfect. I’ll just be blamed for a man-eating manticore and a deadly, ‘excitable’ wind spirit terrorizing the city then.”
“Again, I will remind you that I don’t eat men. That infers swallowing. At most, I just chew as much as I absolutely have to and spit.”
She snorted out a soft, somewhat hysterical laugh. “Perhaps you should hang up the protector role and go around extolling the virtues of spitting over swallowing. Some men have a hard time following why anyone wouldn’t want to swallow.”
Samir gave her a puzzled look that she waved off.
“Never mind.”
She rubbed her brow and sighed heavily. She was most definitely not getting out of it, and he had a point. If Zayman was continuously sending hunters after Samir, sooner or later, things would escalate when the manticore finally had enough and went on the offense. It was unconventional, but this was her chance to save lives… and really, wasn’t that a hunter’s purpose?
“Fine. Fine. But there are going to be ground rules,” she snapped, jabbing a finger in his direction, aimed straight at his nose. “Foremost of which will be no killing or destroying anything unless there is absolutely no choice. And absolutely no harming innocent people.”
His brow lowered, obviously not pleased with her tone, and his wickedly barbed tail swiped angrily, but he nodded with a sharp tip of his head. “I would never harm an innocent, but I have conditions too if I must abide by yours. Such as allowing me to protect you even if it is all snarl and no bite. I will trust your judgment, but you will trust my control.”
“Well, we do all know that you are the king of control,” she muttered, thinking again of how long it had been since he had bothered to touch her.
How the hell did he simply turn all that passion off so easily? She was feeling a restless itch that was about to drive her mad and fueled her irritable mood. He gave her an arch look, but she again waved it off. She certainly wasn’t in the mood to explain the odd mechanics of her mind and libido when it didn’t even make sense to her.
“So, how are we going to get into the city?” she sighed.
The infuriating male met her question with one of his odd shrugs. “You are the hunter and accustomed to dealing with humans. How would you suggest we gain entry without rousing immediate suspicion?”
An idea rose to the surface, so unholy and so unlikely that it seemed both genius and supreme idiocy at the same time. She licked her lips nervously. What did she have to lose? Apparently, it wasn’t her life if Samir was to be believed, but if she failed, she wasn’t certain if she could face the repercussions.
“Well… do you have any chain?”
He blinked and then smiled. “Perhaps I should demonstrate the answer to that question.”
Samir hadan assortment of metal cuffs. Some were small enough to fit around the narrowest wrist, and some large enough to collar a bear. And the chain… never had she seen so many chains of various thicknesses and sizes of links. She studied it incredulously.
“But where did all of this come from?”
The manticore shrugged. “It is a hobby.”
She blinked and glanced at him over her shoulder. “Collecting chains and manacles is a hobby? That is the strangest thing I ever heard—well, not the strangest. There was a hunter I heard of who obsessively collected claws which doesn’t sound weird until he wants to show you a troll toenail.” She mimed gagging, and Samir chuckled.
“No. I live in a mineral rich cavern and produce fires which I have the ability to control. I enjoy forging. A very long time ago, a human I captured demonstrated such an ability and thirsted for knowledge of it. So, we made a bargain. He taught me everything he knew, and once I mastered it—I let him go.”
“Mastered it, huh?” She squinted at him. “Just how long did it take?”
“Just a century or so,” he rumbled absently. “But I was good at my word and let him return to his home—such as it was. Still, I missed the company once he was gone.”
Abby genuinely didn’t know whether to be horrified that he kept a human who possessed an amusing skill he desired for a century—and what that could mean for her—or to feel sympathetic for the loneliness buried within the heart of the monster currently fiddling with a chain hanging from an anchor in the wall.
Her brow furrowed as she focused on the anchor. Why was there an anchor in the wall?
Samir struck, moving with unexpected speed. Abby’s skin jumped, flinching instinctively as she prepared for the pain that didn’t come. Instead, a cold manacle slipped around her neck, the metal settling against her skin as the latch slid closed with a click. A second click followed, which she knew was the lock fastening in place.
