Page 18 of In Violent Waves

She needed to get out of these trees and find her way back to the water. And if that took too long, and she ran out of time, she needed to hide so that he wouldn’t find her.

Lyra stopped walking and craned her ears to listen. It was quiet. She couldn’t hear Wilder’s footsteps now. There was only the soft rustle of the leaves in the trees. She smiled to herself, feeling free for the first time and wondering how long it would take him to realize she wasn’t attached to the rope.

A roar of fury had birds flying away and the forest coming to life.

Not long, apparently.

Wilder roared her name like it was a world he planned to conquer. Her actual name—not Legs.

Holding her breath, she crouched under the branches of an immense hawthorn tree. She slid along the base of the trunk to the forest floor.

She needed to stay still and quiet, and surely he would not find her. This seemed to be a vast forest, and he was only one man—elf.

The forest grew quiet again, and she could no longer hear the echo of her name. He must have gone in the opposite direction then.

Lyra had a sudden sinking feeling like she would never make it back to the water. It was an eerie feeling, unsettling and bizarre. It prickled the skin of her palms and slithered through her gut.

A crunch of leaves beside her made her flinch. Her heart was a flurry of panic in her chest. Rough hands seized her arms and wrenched her to her feet. They were not the large, skilled hands of the elf.

“Ah, ah, ah. What do we have here?” The stench of ale had her leaning away from the bear of a man who gripped her.

Her eyes adjusted to the dim light outside of the tree’s shadow.

The man looked monstrous. Scarred cheeks and one milky eye.

“My, my, that is a nice cunt,” another voice chortled from the darkness beside them.

The sound was like claws raking at her skin.

Lyra’s stomach plummeted to the ground.

A meaty, sweaty hand pawed at her face and roughly grabbed her by the cheeks.

“Such a pretty mouth to fuck.”

Terror sliced through her, snatching the air from her lungs. She fought under his hold, biting and clawing at the man who held her. Her thread of power glimmered brighter in her chest.

But she couldn’t. Not even now.

Wilder had warned her there were worse things in these woods. She should have listened.

Blindly biting, she clipped the finger of one.

“Fuck! She bit me!”

She spat the fleshy taste onto the ground. Her mouth filled with saliva as nausea roiled through her stomach.

Disgusting. These men were rotten.

Lyra wasn’t prepared for the punch to the gut that had her doubling over. A groan escaped her as the air deflated her lungs. A searing pain tore at her scalp as he wrenched her head back up.

“Get the dress out of the way, Rupert,” the man from the shadows spoke.

He stepped out of the night then and into the dappled shaft of moonlight spearing through the tree canopy. He was thin, with a hawkish nose and eyes that rivaled the darkness of the forest around him. He tugged at his belt to loosen it and leered at her.

Rupert, the bear of the man holding her, ripped at her dress. The fabric, though heavy to her, tore easily under his fist.

No.