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The male didn’t respond to my question, but maybe he didn’t hear me with the rush of the waterfall blocking out so much noise.
I strained to conjure the image of my father's face, but it remained shrouded in the fog of amnesia that enveloped my mind. I also couldn’t picture my mother. In that disorienting moment, I grappled with the unsettling truth that I couldn't even recall who I was.
This was stress. I had to be in shock.
“I’m waiting for an answer!” he spat.
“I… I—”
“ALPHA!”
I jerked my head up and saw that we weren’t alone any longer, my stalling and stuttering making this nightmare worse. The others that he had warned of had finally arrived, and now I was in real trouble—if I hadn’t already been before.
Two huge Royal Guards stood at the entrance of the cave, their eyes still adjusting to the low light, although how I knew their profession, I couldn’t say. Perhaps they had called him Alpha, and that was a word still burned in the depth of my vocabulary, although I was still having a difficult time placing the capacity of my problem at the moment. It was hard to figure out which issue was my biggest, given my current state of affairs.
Maybe my brain was dying. Maybe this was the afterlife.
Several possibilities ran the gambit of my mind, none of them making any more sense than the last one.
“Stay out!” my captor growled at his guards, barely turning his steely gray eyes away from me to address them. “Don’t come in here!”
“Alpha, is everything all right?” one of them ventured, although there was a distinct note of wariness in his question.
Their voices didn’t come closer, the understanding not making me feel any better. I wasn’t sure if their presence was good or bad for me now, given the aggressiveness of this gorgeous, but clearly furious, stranger. But three angry strangers were certainly worse than one… right? Or would they be more sympathetic to my plight? Whatever my plight was.
“I SAID, STAY OUT!” he snarled again.
There were no more questions after that. His attention was back on me, and despite my poor state, I couldn’t help but look at the ripple in his ab muscles as he kept me in place. His head cocked to the side as he waited for me to answer his pointed questions.
“I asked you who you were and why you’re here.” This time, his tone was dead, which made him even more terrifying.
I swallowed thickly, shaking my head. The water had clumped my tangled tresses together, slopping them over my bare shoulders and making me shiver as the strands dripped down my back.
“I… I don’t know,” I mewled. “I’m sorry, but I really don’t know!”
My response appeared to take him aback.
For half a second, he merely blinked at me, weighing my response. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”
Gulping again, I tried to sit up, this time with more caution, as if to show him I wasn’t making any sudden moves, although I couldn’t fathom how he might be afraid of me.
“I’m not sure how I got here. I didn’t know this was your land. I don’t even know where I am.”
He scoffed disbelievingly. “Everyone knows this land belongs to Silverhold Tower—to the king,” he snapped. I continued to stare at him, and he returned my look, his face taking on a barely perceivable softness. “Youdoknow me, don’t you?”
I shook my head softly, afraid of antagonizing him or saying the wrong thing, but it was the truth. I had no idea what Silverhold was or what land I was on. But I believed his fury was genuine, and that I was definitely somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be. At the same time, I had no real answers to give him about how I’d come to be there. If the roles were reversed, I wouldn’t have believed me, either.
“I-I’m in a cave,” I blubbered, knowing I wasn’t helping myself.
He finally released my shoulders and let me sit up, his slate irises taking in my shivering form with more interest now. A small wave of dizziness washed over me as I sat up, but I managed not to swoon. Fainting wasn’t going to help my cause.
“A cave onmyland,” he agreed.
“Okay,” I agreed.
Once more, we just stared at one another until he exhaled a whoosh of breath, like he didn’t know where to go from here.
“What’s your name?” he demanded.
