Page 91 of Escape from the Green

A loud crack had us both stiffening, turning, trying to find the source.

"Maybe I should take a page out of Smoky's book," he suggested, nodding his head up to the tree above him.

"That might be a good idea. Get a better vantage point. Maybe you'll even run into her up there."

Had I known those were the last words I would speak to him, maybe I would have chosen other ones instead.

I stood beneath him, watching as he climbed so high he almost looked small.

And it was then there was a crack to the back of my skull, sending a blinding pain shooting through my head before there was nothing.

The piercing in my head was what I was aware of next time I was aware of anything at all. It was a sharp, unrelenting pain that made my hands raise instinctively, pressing into my temples as though the pressure might be able to ease the ache.

A low, throaty whimper escaped me before I remembered.

The woods.

Drake.

Watching him climb a tree.

Then the pain.

Someone had hit me.

Someone had hit me and taken me.

The latter part I knew because if I was still with Drake, his hands would have been all over me, comforting me, trying to ease my pain.

There was nothing soft or sweet or comforting about how I felt right then.

I fought back a wave of nausea as I tried to think past the migraine threatening to split the hemispheres of my brain.

Cold.

I was cold.

Too cold to be out in The Green still.

In fact, it was so cold that I must have been in a cellar, deep where the ground had yet to thaw out, keeping everything dark and damp and near freezing.

The side of my face was numb, whether from trauma or the cold stone floor it was resting on, I didn't know.

Taking a breath, my eyes slitted open, looking around, trying to get some idea of where I might have been, who might have taken me. And why.

Not that the why really mattered that much. Fae didn't always have a good reason. Like the sex fae who had simply wanted to drain me of all my desire to feed himself.

The idea of that fate - and the dozen or so others that immediately came to mind - made my stomach twist and knot painfully as I planted my hand on the floor, pushing myself up, closing my eyes as the worst of the spinning subsided.

It was as I tried to move to sit up that I felt something around my ankle, something cold and hot at the same time.

No.

Not hot.

Burning.

My leg yanked back instinctively, trying to dislodge it before I saw what was there.