Page 47 of Bound to Three Fae Beasts

I unsheathed my claws as I mauled the first of his companions, tearing into him with both claws and teeth. He screamed, writhed, and tried to break my hold with magic, but he was no match for me. When I was satisfied he could no longer fight, I flipped him down the corridor and faced the other three. They’d regrouped and taken their beast forms. A bear, a wolverine, and a coyote.

The bear and coyote rushed me while the wolverine hung back, pelting me with spells.

I held them off, my concentration split between the attacks. A spell slipped through my defenses and split open my side from shoulder to hip. The pain made me stumble, and the bear caught my chest with a crushing blow that sent me into the wall. As I staggered back to my feet, the coyote went for my throat. I batted it away, ripping through fur and sending blood spraying in the air.

Something arced out of the darkness at the end of the corridor. The delicate tinkle of shattered glass was followed swiftly by a noxious smoke that quickly filled the corridor. It wound in my lungs and made me splutter and choke. As the others backed away, coughing, a figure darted through the smoke.

Azriel had come back.

Tears welled in my eyes as the smoke stung them, and I blinked rapidly as I stared at the girl. She’d wrapped her tunic over her mouth and nose, and came right for me. Her arm wrapped around my chest and she pulled. Confused and curious, I shifted back to human form and allowed her to lead me out.

We were free from the gas soon enough. Rusco and his friends sagged against the walls as they stumbled out after us, but none of them seemed interested in keeping up the fight. Azriel half-dragged me away, pausing only once to splash a healing potion against my side.

Was she seeing in the darkness? I continued to gasp and choke, still too confused by her being here to pull away. Azriel led me through a passage, and soon the cool air of outside started to clear my lungs. We emerged near the pond, and she wasted no time pulling me into the shallows.

“Try to relax your lungs,” she directed as she dunked her tunic into the water, then started wiping off her eyes. “Rinse out your eyes when you can.”

I infused my body with healing magic, taking care of my lungs and eyes first. I washed my face in the cool water. As my vision became clearer, I studied Azriel. She appeared to be navigating just fine despite the darkness.

She ignored me, clearly not interested in making friends. So why had she come back? She’d gotten away. Then she had come back and used one of her stolen potions to … what, rescue me?

“This is unexpected,” I finally said.

She wrung out her tunic and pulled it, wet, back on. “I know, I know. It was completely unnecessary, right? You had those three right where you wanted them.”

I stretched experimentally, checking myself. Pain throbbed through various parts of my body. They’d gotten in more hits than I realized. “Not exactly. And you’re not going to get anywhere by downplaying yourself like that. I might be good, but even I can’t take on four powerful fae and come out merely scratched. I just can’t figure why you did it.”

Azriel shook her head, squinting at me. Her pupils were blown so wide that even this moonlight would be painful. Ahh. Scratch that, she used two potions. One was to give her night vision.

“Consider it repayment for helping me escape Red that day,” she said.

When did I ever help her escape Red? I thought back, then snorted. “That was for my own sake. Seb is annoying when he gets moody. There’s no fun in it. That, and Red would only get even more frustrating to deal with if Flora turned on him, trying to get on Seb’s good side. It had nothing to do with you.”

Her answer fascinated me, though. She could very easily use this situation to make me indebted to her. She may not have saved my life, but she did save me from quite a beating. Rusco especially would have been vicious with me. My association with Seb and Court Laurel made me a prime target for him, and if he could pat himself on the back by beating me, he’d do it.

It was easy to say that Azriel distracted me at the start, that if it weren’t for her, I would have seen them coming. But that was blaming her just for existing, and that sort of arrogance only put me in further danger. I allowed myself to be distracted.

“You shouldn’t offer up an easy out for me, anyway,” I told her.

“An easy out?”

I shrugged. “You risked yourself to help me. That means that you are in a position to demand something from me. If you say that it’s as repayment for something else, I could easily say it’s not full repayment and put you in my debt.”

Azriel frowned at me, cocking her head. The wet tunic clung to her figure, and I gave her a pointed once-over. She folded her arms over her chest.

“Don’t be a creep,” she snapped.

“You could do worse than being the mistress of a high-born fae. Though it won’t help you survive the Academy,” I added with another shrug. I wanted to see how she’d react to that. Not that I’d actually take her up on it if she did try anything. Seb and Jasper were the two people I could reasonably call friends.

Funny, that.

Azriel glared at me a moment longer before she snorted. “It would make it even more difficult to survive. How dare some low-born seduce one of the fae’s bright stars? Though”—her voice softened and a troubled look came onto her face—“you aren’t as big as I thought you were.”

“Excuse me?” I gave my crotch and exaggerated look.

“I thought you and Seb were the top of the food chain here. That nobody would dare mess with you two because you’re the heirs.”

“Only heirs right now. We won’t be untouchable until we’re the heads of our houses and we’ve wiped out anyone who would dare mess with us.” Even then, being untouchable meant some people wanted to touch you even more.