Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 88048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
TWELVE
LYNX
“No! No, leave me alone! Don’t touch me—don’t come near me!”
The sounds of a female in distress woke Lynx from the half-doze he’d been in. He sat up straight at once, roused by the calls.
Since Mirabella wouldn’t let them into her room, he had decided to keep tabs on her by sitting right outside her bedchamber door. He’d taken off his vest but kept his trousers and boots on and had been dozing off and on, though he was still on the alert for any trouble. And now, it seemed that trouble had found them.
“Saxon!” he shouted as he sprang to his feet. But his Bond-Brother was already there.
“What it is? I heard her crying—I’ll fucking kill him if he’s in there trying to hurt her!” The protective growl in the Lykan Shifter’s voice was unmistakable.
Lynx felt similarly protective but he wanted to be careful.
“Let me go in first,” he told Saxon. “You come right behind me—all right?”
“Fucking hurry then!” Saxon made an impatient gesture with one hand.
Lynx grasped the doorknob, afraid he would find it locked. But by the grace of the Goddess, it turned in his hand and the door swung open to reveal a cavernous bed chamber dominated by an enormous, carved four poster bed.
Mirabella was thrashing in the center of the bed, still calling out in distress, but as far as Lynx could see, she was alone. His heart, which had been pounding at a frantic pace, began to slow a little. Maybe it was just a bad dream.
He stepped into the room, only to be intercepted by Beelie. The automaton rolled forward to block his way to the bed.
“Intruder alert!” it announced in its hollow, mechanical voice. “Intruder alert! You are not permitted to come near to Mistress Mirabella.”
Lynx raised his voice to be heard over the automaton.
“Mistress Mirabella? My Lady?” he called, trying to wake her from her bad dream. “Can you hear me? Hello?”
But Mirabella just kept thrashing, crying out in the darkness, and sounding more and more distressed.
“Please, no! No—don’t cut me! Don’t hurt me! Please!” she begged and the fear in her voice nearly broke his heart.
Lynx couldn’t stand it anymore. With a deep breath, he allowed his Fur Form out just a little—a quarter-Shift. Enough to make his eyes glow and a short, dense pelt of golden fur to spring out all over his body. He was already in excellent physical shape, but the Shift allowed him to access the even greater physical prowess of his Fur Form.
Crouching low for a moment, he leaped over the eight-foot-tall robot in a single bound and landed lightly on his feet beside the bed.
Beelie seemed confused by this, because he didn’t come after Lynx—he just kept rolling back and forth in front of the doorway repeating,
“Intruder alert! Intruder alert!”
But Lynx no longer cared about the automaton—he was too worried about Mirabella’s distress to bother with the robot.
“Mirabella? My Lady?” He reached out to shake her gently and she moaned and shook her head fitfully on the pillow.
“No…no…he’s after me! He’ll get me this time—I know he will!”
“Nobody’s going to get you,” Lynx told her. “Wake up, my Lady—you’re having a bad dream!”
Finally, Mirabella’s big green eyes opened. In the dim bed chamber they were pools of shadow.
“Who…what…?” she seemed confused, looking around the chamber, possibly for the killer.
“It’s just me—it’s Lynx,” he told her. “You were having a bad dream.”
“I…I was?” She sat up, still half-asleep, her hair a curly halo around her head and the sheet clutched to her chest.
Lynx sat carefully on the bed.
“You were, but you’re awake now and everything is all right. Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.
“I was running and he was chasing me,” she whispered, her eyes looking haunted. “But I couldn’t run fast enough and Beelie…Beelie was gone. I couldn’t find him so I couldn’t hide inside him. So all I could do was run. But he—the killer—he kept getting closer and closer. And he said…he said he wanted to…to play with me a long…long time.”
She gave a choked sob and Lynx felt his heart twist in his chest again. She looked so small—so frightened and vulnerable. Without thinking about it, he put an arm around her and drew her to his side.
Mirabella stiffened at first, then pressed herself against him. She rubbed her cheek against his bare chest—still covered in the short, velvety pelt since he was still a quarter-Shifted—and gave a trembling sigh.
“I thought he had me,” she whispered and gave another little sob. “I thought…thought he’d get me for sure this time.”
“Nobody’s going to get you, my Lady,” Lynx promised her. He could feel her shaking in his arms and he wanted so badly to comfort her. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked softly. “Not just about the dream—about what happened the night you got away?”