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The snow begins to fall, coming down thick and heavy too fucking late. I am shaking with cold and fatigue, my hind leg has gone numb, and nearing my limit when the lights of the village come into view.
I reach the sentries and hear them call out before blackness comes for me, and I collapse.
* * *
Aston
I fall in and out of consciousness as we travel through the forests. In the brief moments of lucidity, I hear Freya’s quiet sobbing.
I finally rouse fully as I’m dropped to a hard stone floor. They chain me to the wall with enough give not to rouse me from where I slump.
My head is pounding. My body is likewise throbbing with pain, even as I shiver uncontrollably from the cold. My fingers are so stiff it is a wonder they have not snapped off. There is not an inch on me that does not ache.
But there is a relief to be free of the jostling, pounding gait of the horse I was bound over.
It takes me long moments before I can rouse myself enough to sit up and longer still for coherent thoughts to rise from the cycle of misery and despair.
If my body aches, then my heart aches more. We have failed her. We have failed our mate in the gravest of ways.
And Lor. I saw the arrow—he would not have been able to shift. Gods, I pray he made it back to the village and did not die alone in the forest from his many wounds.
Worries beat at my mind even as pain beats at my skull and weary body.
The stone floor beneath me is icy and seeps into me, but it is warmer here than outside. When I test my fingers, I find they can move.
I’m not going to fucking die yet. Not here, and not because of some bastard lord. Freya needs me. For her, I will fucking live.
There’s a bucket close at hand, and I see the glisten of what looks like water. Heaving myself to my feet, I shuffle over, dip my fingers in, and take a tentative lick.
It is water, clean, if a little stale. Now is not the time to be precious. I cup it in my shaking hands and bring it to my lips, opening cracked wounds and making them sting like a bastard. It is of small consequence amid all my other woes. I take a little more water and slowly regain more of my wits.
I don’t know where the fuck we are. Somewhere in the city, I believe. I don’t know how the fuck we shall get out of this but, if Lor yet lives, I know he will find a fucking way.
I put my back against the wall and let my ass slide down until it meets the frigid stone floor.
Time.We never had enough of it, nor the evidence we needed. So Lor and I acted. Perhaps recklessly. But what choice did we have?
I cannot lose Freya or Lor. Yet I am beaten bloody, hanging on to consciousness by a thread, and trapped behind a locked door.
The best I can do tonight is survive and be ready for whatever tomorrow might bring.
* * *
Freya
I pass through rage into sorrow and finally despair.
Then, I pass through all three again.
Marshal, unable to handle me or my constant fighting, hands me over to one of his men, a rough brute who paws me too tightly and makes my stomach churn when he sniffs my hair.
He is scenting me. It is the omega effect and something I have never experienced before—how even beta men can be turned a little stupid by our scent.
I have never experienced it before, having never revealed.
I should not be experiencing it now, given I am mated. It leaves a terrible fear that something is wrong.
My mind is a jumble of chaotic thoughts. The images of what just happened will haunt me for the rest of my life. I worry for Lor, seeing him limp away, his coat covered in blood. I worry for Aston, lying lifeless, slung over the horse, and suffering terribly.
