A Love Untamed (Feral Warriors #7)(38)

Backing off her, he turned away, nosing in every direction, seeking the warding. There. The buzz zapped his nose no more than three feet from the soles of Melisande’s boots. He followed it a couple of yards in both directions, needing to make sure, then shifted back into human form and lifted Melisande into his arms. Tucking her tight against his chest, he strode hard and fast in the opposite direction. He couldn’t get her away from that deadly energy fast enough.

But as he strode across the forest floor, suddenly everything changed. Stone walls appeared out of nowhere, thirty feet high, at least fifteen feet long, as if he’d walked through an invisible portal into another world.

What the hell?

He tried to back up and return to the forest, but instead he slammed into stone. The walls hemmed them in on all sides. Impossible. High above, blue skies peered down.

He’d walked them into a bloody prison.

This was not possible. His heart began to thunder in his chest.

In his arms, Melisande stirred, her eyes fluttering open, then snapping wide as she struggled to pull herself up.

“Where are we?” she demanded, groggily.

“I’ve no bloody idea.” Pulse pounding, he set her on the cobblestones at his feet. “Wait here.”

She snorted. “It doesn’t look like there’s anyplace to go.”

He strode forward, slamming his palms against rough, cool stone liberally covered in soft moss. “It appears to be real,” he muttered.

Melisande pushed herself slowly to her feet. “You thought it wasn’t? How did we get caught in here, anyway?”

She swayed, and he rushed back and grabbed her arm, steadying her. With surprise, he realized he felt no pain.

“You’ve stopped blasting energy.”

“Yes.” Confusion clouded her eyes. “We hit the warding again.”

“Aye.”

Sapphire eyes lifted to his. “You knocked me down. I don’t remember anything after that.”

“There’s not much to remember.” She seemed steadier, if still in shock. He released his grip on her, running his hand lightly up and down her tunic-clad arm instead. “I picked you up, carried you away from the warding, and here we are. I saw this place appear out of the corners of my eyes between one step and the next.”

Fear bolted through her eyes. “Magic, then. When we hit the warding, we must have ended up inside it.”

The thought chilled him to the bone. If the magic could displace them, it could certainly toss them into this prison. Just where the Mage wanted them, where they could slaughter them like pigs.

No bloody way.

He tugged on a springy lock of golden hair that had pulled loose from her braid. “We’ll get out of this, Mel.” But he wasn’t so sure, and the look she gave him told him she knew it. And agreed.

“It’s too bad you can’t shift into a bird,” she muttered, then turned toward the nearest wall, kicking and pushing, running her hands along the stone as if looking for a fingerhold that might allow her to start climbing.

There was no doubt in his mind she was still in shock, yet she’d pulled herself together, and he admired her for it.

Joining her, he, too, sought a loose stone or a way out, but nothing moved, and the wall was too tightly built to allow for climbing. Inside him, anger sparked, frustration growing until he found himself growling low in his throat, until he feared his claws and fangs were about to erupt.

Bloody fecking hell.

He had to get control. Or instead of protecting Melisande, he was going to wind up hurting her.

As they beat helplessly at the stone walls, as escape appeared less and less likely by the moment, Melisande fought back the panic that once more stalked her. Deep within her mind, the screams began to rise, and she pushed them away, struggling to build a mental wall or a box, anything to keep them away from her, to keep them buried. So many emotions. How had she ever lived beneath the onslaught of so much feeling?

Slowly, she managed to force the emotions into an imaginary box where she locked them up tight, then prayed she could keep them there, keep them silent, or she didn’t know how she’d function at all. As it was, she had more than enough to deal with. With the return of her emotions came the memories, a flood of them. Miserable memories, filled with pain and grief. Raw, even after centuries.

Being unable to feel had allowed her to be strong, so incredibly strong. She’d been able to do what had to be done to protect her queen and her race. Feelings—compassion, sympathy, pity—invariably got in the way of that. She did not want to be the woman she’d once been, softhearted, weak. She liked being the warrior, liked being untouched emotionally by what went on around her.

The emotions were back now, in all their miserable color. Most of them, at least. But she would go cold again, once she found Castin. As long as she didn’t allow Fox to soften her more.

She watched him beat at the stone, then run at it, full speed, ramming it with his shoulder. Bone crunched and he grimaced, then returned to his starting point and ran at it again. Over and over, he hit the wall until his shirt was bloody, until the sounds coming from his throat were more animal than man.

He whirled on her suddenly, the fangs dropping from his gums, his eyes turning to yellow animal eyes.

“Fox?”

She swallowed as she stared at his fearsome visage, at the wild male trapped within the stone walls with her, a shifter gone feral, half-out of his mind with the need to tear something apart.