Page 77 of The Hunted

Was that why she’d felt comfortable enough to wake up?

Because he was there?

The shackles at her ankles dug into skin and bone from how taut she dared to pull the chain. Yet, Arelle didn’t move.

Neither did Eryx.

Gone was the fancy waistcoat and shined boots from the day before. Replaced instead by a loose shirt with sleeves that flared a bit at the wrists and hung down to his mid-thigh. Scuffed leather boots that hadn’t even been tied up along the seam at the back shifted against the dirt floor of the stall, drawing her gaze up his lean form.

His clothes hid his body.

It didn’t matter.

She still remembered perfectly fine how he looked without most of them.

“The horse—they call him Till,” Eryx said, his voice creating an echo with every beat of her heart. While he spoke to her, he looked at the horse. “He seems to like you. Then again, animals do tend to recognize similar creatures.”

She wasn’t an animal, though.

Arelle stayed quiet.

Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, Eryx stood straight against the gate, his other hand coming around to show the folded pile of white, flowy fabric he held. He still didn’t look her way, but at least Arelle could breathe like this. Once he stared at her, that would all change, she knew.

“I know you’re not mute. Why you insist on this silence is beyond me.”

Finally, his gaze snapped to hers.

She hadn’t wanted him to look at her.

Now, she didn’t want him to look away.

Gods.

The bond would kill her.

He took one step closer to her, and even though she was pressed against the wood, Arelle found it almost impossible not to move toward him, too. Somehow, she managed to stay still, even when his gaze took a slow trek over her. From the trembling cloak she held in her shaking hands to the way his stare lingered appreciatively on the shape of her hips. There was something about the way his pupils darkened—making those icy blue eyes of his warmer, even if it was only from the heat of the man—that had her breath catching.

He liked what he saw.

He also hated it.

Arelle didn’t need for him to say it to know.

“Doesn’t matter,” he muttered.

Although as he said it, she felt it was a lie. Whatever he was about to say, it did matter. His tone gave it away, but so did the electricity in the air when he came one more step closer. Now, if he reached out, he could touch her.

He didn’t, though.

Not yet.

“It doesn’t matter,” he repeated in a sigh, “whether I hear your voice or not because I swear, I hear it all the time anyway. At night when I’m alone. In the wind when it blows past my ears. Every time I close my eyes. Whether or not that’s because I’ve dreamed of getting my hands around your throat every single day since that night in the water orchard … or if it’s something else, well, I can’t say.”

Impossible, she wanted to say.

The bond wouldn’t make it so.

She hadn’t sung for him. Hadn’t even talked for him that night. He would not be able to hear the siren’s call—his mate—when she hadn’t given that to him on the island when the bond began to tether them.