Page 3 of The Hidden
A fluffy white furry tail—I didn’t realize I had until now—cracks out and pummels the sky shadow, and I slash, kick, and hit it in an effort to get it to disengage. The ground is quickly screaming up toward us, and I can’t tell if this thing is trying to rip me apart in the air or smash me to pieces against the ground. I scream again in frustration when I can’t get it off of me, and we spin violently with disorienting g-force as we fall from the sky. The black-tipped beak snaps for my face again, and I manage to get a talon-capped hand up and press the attacking beak down and away from me.
Eyes the color of honey land on mine from a black feathered face, and I realize quickly thatwhateverI am, this thing is one too. I don’t know what happens in that moment, but a fiery warmth roars through my body, and the sky shadow doesn’t try to snap for my neck again. It almost looks... surprised.
I scream out at it in my head for it toget off me or we’re about to fucking die.
Like it can hear me, the honey-hued eagle eyes move from mine to the threat of the rising ground at my back. The sky shadow’s wings shoot out and catch the air. It releases me from its hold and—I think—tries to flip me over, but I’m falling with such force, and at such an awkward angle, that I can’t get my wings out to stop myself.
The animal above me shrieks, and I can hear the panic in the sound. The next thing I know, I’m slamming into the unforgiving ground. And for the second time since I simply tried to follow my gran’s wishes and spread her ashes, I feel my bones break and shatter before everything goes black.
* * *
Irelease a tired groan and stretch the stiffness out of my limbs. The sheets are cool against my skin, and a gentle breeze caresses my face and arms. My muscles feel tight, and I give a little screech as I flex my arms and legs and then let them relax. The sound bounces around the room and then slams back into me, bringing disjointed memories with it. I look down at my arms in awe. The last time I saw them, they were massive, muscled, feathered, and tipped with sharp ass talons. I flip my hands over, studying my limbs like somehow I’ll be able to see whatever it is that I am just under my skin.
I take stock of how I feel, and I’m shocked to find that none of the overwhelming agony I felt before I passed out seems to exist anywhere in my body anymore. Nothing feels broken. I slip out of the massive bed to make sure there are no residual twinges of pain. The pale yellow sheet falls away from my body, and the cool breeze roaming all over my skin confirms that I am, without question, naked. I reach for the sheet on the bed and wrap it around me, the soft linen trailing behind me as I look over the room in search of my clothes.
The huge bed I woke up in is the only piece of furniture in here. The floor and the walls are the same soft cream color. They look like they’re made out of marble, but this stone somehow looks softer. Vines have been carved into the stone at the corners of the room, and they reach up to a Gothic cathedral-style ceiling. The room is bright thanks to the massive open archways that make up the whole wall to my right. A balcony stretches out on the other side of the openings, and I’m assaulted by green trees and plants that make up the cliffside across from me.
The red-purple hued mountains I was flying through earlier flash through my mind, and I rush out onto the balcony to see if I can spot them. My heart falls when they’re nowhere in sight, and I’m left even more disoriented about where I am. I turn to take in the building my balcony is attached to. The pounding sound of water surrounds me, and I stand open-mouthed and take in everything my gaze lands on. The balcony and room I’m standing in have been built into the side of a cliff. In fact, a wholecastleseems to have been carved into the stony side of this massive mountain. There’s so much intricate detail to the structure, though, that it almost looks like the cliff grew around a castle, swallowing it up and only leaving hints of it exposed to the world. A huge thundering waterfall pours off the cliff top, and I can feel some of the mist brush against me as I stand out here, exposed and reeling.
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 anXover 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 tellyouthat,” 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’mthe 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.
