AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I shouldn’t have paid any attention to his drivel, but the words were delivered with so much confidence that the little energy I had drained.
“Magnus knows when he’s won and when he’s lost,” I said, lowering my head and sticking to the story that we’d come up with earlier. “The others want the information you have, and…and they don’t have the same reasons to despise you that Magnus has.”
Another, long silence fell. I stared at Dmitri’s feet for a few seconds before he said, “Is that food?”
I glanced up at him, then at the ale and the bread and cheese, which I’d sandwiched together to carry. “Haven’t they brought you any food?”
“Give that to me, pup, I’m starving,” Dmitri said, gesturing to me with his left hand.
I noticed he hadn’t answered my question. They probably had given him something earlier, but if Dmitri wanted what I had, I might as well give it to him. I’d suddenly lost my appetite anyhow.
I held out the mug to him, stretching my arm as far as I could in the process so I wouldn’t have to get too close to him.
“Scared of me already, pup?” Dmitri asked with a sneer as he snatched the mug from me.
He had to take a step back to ease the tension of the shackles on his right hand so that he could hold the mug and take the bread and cheese from me. More than that, he had to sink to sit on the floor again to have the range of motion to eat.
I was glad I could stand and that it put me above him, even though I felt so far beneath him that it was oppressive.
“Have you given me any reason not to be afraid of you?” I asked him in turn.
Dmitri chuckled as he chewed my bread and cheese. “No,” he said, then took several long gulps of ale. “You should be afraid of me. As soon as I’m free from this useless captivity, I’m going to rip your ass to shreds.” He paused to tear a chunk out of the bread with his teeth, chewed, then said, “And you’re going to love it. You’re going to beg me to fuck you harder and to make you bleed.”
I swallowed hard, and a tremor shot through me, though whether it was fear or lust, I couldn’t tell. In my experience, the two emotions weren’t that far apart.
“The others overrode Magnus, you know,” I said, trying not to let the fear show in my voice. I knew was failing, though. God, I was so useless. “They said we need to keep you alive. More than that, they said you’re our best link to the wolves of the eastern forest. You’re the only one who knows what’s going on over there.”
Dmitri stopped chewing and looked at me in surprise. He downed another gulp of ale to wash down his latest bite, then smiled. “They said that about me?”
I nodded. “They want to know what’s going on with the wild wolves and with General Rufus.”
Dmitri laughed and slumped to sit against the doorjamb, making himself more comfortable. “The real wolves, you mean. Only tamed idiots would call us the wild wolves and dare to call themselves any sort of wolf at all.”
I said nothing. After nearly two months spent in the eastern forest, I knew the opinion those wolves had of the Wolf River Kingdom. I had no interest in trying to argue a point I couldn’t win.
“The meetings that Magnus and Jorgen Iceblade wanted to have with King Sai of the Kostya Kingdom failed,” I told him, leaning against the opposite wall, still out of his reach. “We’re on our way to Good Port. My friend Lefric is together with Olympus Hakobyan, who is the son of the current ruler of Good Port. We’re going to stay at their compound, and Jorgen and Hati are coming to join us. There’s going to be another meeting, and they want you to represent the eastern forest.”
Again, Dmitri stopped in the middle of eating. He stared at me as though I’d lost my mind.
But then his expression changed. His smile grew, and if I wasn’t mistaken, he sat a little straighter. “Well, well,” he said, chuckling to himself. “At last, someone has seen that I am not to be trifled with.” He glanced up at me. “Did you have something to do with that?”
“I argued against killing you,” I said quietly. “I insisted the information you have is important. You know far more than Ludvig and I were able to discover.”
It was true without embellishing too much. Along with all the other things I was bad at, I was a terrible liar. It was best to stick to something I could defend if I was pressed.
Dmitri grunted and finished the bread and cheese, then downed the rest of the ale. “Make yourself useful, pup,” he said, holding the mug out to me. “Go get me more food. And see if you can convince our hosts to let me out of this stinking cabin. I’m not a prisoner, I’m a representative of the eastern forest.”
I swallowed hard and moved close enough to take the mug from him. When I started past him, he jerked, reaching for me with a growl.
When I yelped and scrambled out of his reach, he laughed.
“You’re too easy to frighten, pup,” he said, leaning against the doorjamb again with a laugh. His eyes were filled with lust as he grinned at me and went on with, “I am going to have so much fun breaking you.”
I nearly fell over myself in my haste to get away from him. Too many things about Dmitri unnerved me, but none of them were the things he probably thought frightened me. The man was broken. I would have to talk to Peter to discover if he’d been like that before Sascha had banished him from his pack, if he’s always been just a little off. He wasn’t at all like his brother. Mikal might have been identical to Dmitri physically—or, at least, he used to be—but the two men were as different as could be.
The sun hung low in the sky by the time I made it up the stairs to the deck. I’d gone to bed around midmorning, and now it was close to nightfall. I’d slept for hours, though I felt as though I could sleep for more. My friends and several other members of Magnus’s entourage sat near the front of the boat, on crates and barrels and on the deck, eating supper.
“Anton, you’re awake,” Lefric said, spotting me before the others.
