The Hidden (Shadowed Wings #1)(5)
Did I die and wake up in a Lord of the Rings movie?
The distinct sound of a heavy door being opened reaches me on the balcony, and I slip behind a pillar just to my left, to hide. Boots tromp into the room, and then panicked voices float out to me.
“Where’d she go?” a masculine tenor voice asks.
Someone else groans loudly with obvious frustration. “He’s going to kill us,” a second, deeper voice declares, as heavy footfall quickly makes its way toward me. A man storms out to the soft looking stone banister and starts to search the sky. I take a deep, quiet inhale and catalogue his scent. I’ve met a plethora of different kinds of shifters in my life—wolves, pumas, even a skunk once—but I have never smelled anything like this guy.
He’s huge. He’s probably got a foot or more on me, and I’m six foot even. His back is broad, and tapers down nicely to a trim waist. His clothes look like they’re some kind of soft gray leather that’s smooth in some places and braided and more armor-like in others. It hugs his muscles and frame very closely, I observe, and then I try to shake away the heat that thought threatens to stir in me. The seam on the side of his pants and top are laced together, and the leather armor looks like it can be removed with just a couple pulls of the ties. He has two swords crossed in an X over his back, and the handles stick up over his shoulders.
“Cum on a tree sprite!” he shouts over the balcony. “How did the guards not see her escape? Zeph is going to gut both of us!”
He whirls around, anger dripping off of him, but before he can stomp back into the room, his dark gray eyes land on mine. They widen for a fraction of a second, and sudden heat blooms in my chest. It starts to rage like an inferno, spreading out through my limbs, and seems to get worse when he runs his warm gaze down my sheet-covered body and back up. He takes a step toward me but stops himself, shaking his head as if to clear it of something. He looks back up at me and narrows his eyes.
If Jamie Dornan and Brad Pitt were shoved into one body, it would look like this guy, well, minus the pissed off look this dude’s face just morphed into. The very attractive, scruffy, and dangerous looking man shakes his head at me.
“Found her,” he announces, his tone flat, his gaze now cold.
I can feel his icy assessment against my now fevered skin, and I don’t know what to make of any of this. I pull the light yellow sheet tighter around my body, needing more between me and whoever this man is. Not a man, I tell myself as a flash of him searching through the sky streaks back through my mind. Not only does he not smell human, he was looking for something that could fly. I quickly bring my arm up to my face and smell it. The same lilac-on-a-warm-breeze scent fills my nose, and my mouth pops open, stunned. I’ve always smelled like wet soil and pine.
Like a wolf.
Anger bubbles inside of me, and I curse the shit out of my grandmother in my head. “Where am I?” I ask, as another person joins the guy with the angry storm clouds for eyes on the balcony.
“The Eyr—,” the other guy starts to answer, but Gray Eyes gives him a glare, and he promptly shuts his mouth and drops his gaze.
“And where is that exactly?” I ask, running the half-name through my head and trying to place where the hell I am. East somewhere? I quickly dismiss that thought. These guys do not look like they’re from anywhere in Asia, and I’ve never heard of a red-purple mountain range there—or anywhere else for that matter.
Gray Eyes scoffs. “Like we would ever tell you that,” he declares, and then he leaves the balcony and storms back into the room. “Bring her to the Hall of Eyes. Zeph wanted to speak to her as soon as she woke up.”
The now very angry, gray-eyed, broad-shouldered stranger disappears out of the room, and I stare at the now empty doorway, confused. What the hell is his problem? I’m the one that just woke up naked in a strange place with no idea how I got here or where here even is. If anyone should be having a tantrum, it’s me.
“Yes, Altern,” the light-haired man still standing across from me replies. “Come,” he instructs, and then he walks away.
“Wait, where are my clothes? I can’t go anywhere like this,” I tell him, gesturing to the sheet wrapped around my body.
He says nothing, just walks right out the door, his back to me. I wait for a second and then decide the answers I’m looking for are probably wherever he’s supposed to lead me. I let out a huff of irritation and then look down at the yellow sheet I’ve wrapped around me. I undo the towel tuck that’s keeping the bedding on me and pull the whole thing behind me. Time to get resourceful.
I pull the sheet tight against my ass and bring the top two corners forward. I move the opening of the sheet to the side like it’s supposed to be an intentional slit, and crisscross the corners of the sheet at my waist. The bed this thing fits is huge, and that works in my favor as I have plenty of fabric to cross the corners of the sheet behind my lower back, bring them forward to cross over my boobs, covering them, and then tie everything off behind my neck. I look like someone who’s trying way too hard to be sexy for some frat toga party, but it will have to do.
I scramble out of the room and catch up with the none too chatty guard. I try to keep track of the empty hallways I’m led through, but it’s hard to stay completely focused on that task as I try to make sure this fucking sheet doesn’t fall off somehow. After maybe five minutes of winding down too many halls for me to possibly keep track of, we arrive at a pair of tall dark wood doors. There are things carved into them, but I don’t get much of a chance to see what as they’re flung open and I’m ushered through. I trip over some of the sheet that’s pooled at my legs and feel the tie around my neck get pulled tighter. The ends don’t come free, but the sheet isn’t secured as tightly around my top as it was before.