Savage One
Born Wild Book Two
Donna Augustine
Copyright © 2019 by Donna Augustine
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Epilogue
Also by Donna Augustine
Acknowledgments
One
My heart pounded so hard that it echoed in my ears and threatened to break out of my ribcage. The face of the clock beside my bed was visible by the light of the full moon. Thirty minutes this time. That was how long before the nightmares came. How long it took for the Magician to haunt my sleep, ax in hand, chopping off my legs and arms and trapping me forever. No chance of escape. The walls of my room felt like the sides of a jail cell, my bed a device of torture.
I closed my eyes but couldn’t stop seeing him. Breathe, slow and steady. He doesn’t have me. He won’t get me. I’ll do whatever needed to avoid that fate, including my own death. Some futures are worse than never waking again.
The breathing wasn’t working, but then again, it never did. Unable to shed the cloying fear of being stuck, I shot out of bed. I pulled on my boots and threw on the heaviest sweater I had. I closed the door of my bedroom, holding on to the doorknob as it clicked home. The place was silent as I tiptoed through the halls, avoiding the spots that creaked.
I stepped out the front door. The air hit my skin and the smell of the trees infused the air with life, freedom, helping my lungs inflate again. I took off at a run because I could. The trees whipped past, branches scraping my flesh, rocks underfoot making me slip. I’d hit the ground and get right back up again. I didn’t care. I’d run until the nightmares faded or the invisible bond that chained me to Callon yanked me back. I’d run until I felt like I was free, truly free. I wouldn’t be caught, not again. Not ever.
I didn’t stop until my limbs were loose as my back hit bark. My lungs burned worse than my legs, and a pain stabbed my side; I welcomed it gladly.
I listened for steps behind me but didn’t hear anything. It didn’t matter. He’d come. He always came.
The crows that always followed cawed loudly as Callon’s beast broke through the trees a few minutes later, large and savage. Fangs that could rip through flesh like a razor through butter, claws that could shred a hide like tissue—there was a time that if I’d seen such a creature, I would’ve run screaming. Now I waited for him, this beast, this creature who’d never been caged.
On the surface, we looked worlds apart. Callon’s beast was raw muscle and power as he towered over me. I was nothing but a scrawny girl with gangly arms, too fragile, too weak, but still standing her ground before him. Deep down, where people couldn’t see, I was a savage, like him. That was what my past had shaped me into, something untamed that would bite, claw, and chew my way out of any trap. Deep down, where it really mattered, we were the same.
He bent his head, a low rumble in his throat as he breathed in my scent, his fangs grazing the tender skin of my neck. In a sudden movement, he grabbed me. I didn’t fight. I wanted to go with him.
He carried me to a place high above the lodge, into one of the caves of the mountainside. He dropped me into the center of piled furs. There were shadows of other things in here I couldn’t make out—a chest, maybe? This was the place he always brought me. The place his beast came when being human was too much.
His chest heaved ragged breaths as he stood in front of the opening of the cave, silhouetted in moonlight. His eyes, a slight shimmer of red and the only thing visible of the face, turned my way.
I burrowed under the furs. He turned back toward the outside as I curled up in a ball, watching him. A gentle snow drifted down outside, but I no longer felt cold. I only felt peace.
My eyes drifted closed. I’d sleep here like I couldn’t anywhere else. In the morning, I’d wake in my bed in the main house with no memory of returning.
Two
Issy stopped beside me with a bowl of sausage and dropped another couple links onto my plate. She gave me a pat on my shoulder and a smile before she went over and put the bowl on the side table. There were many more lined up for the breakfast-goers crowding the great room of the lodge and others in the area that might stop in. Issy liked to cook, liked to feel needed about the place, but she was far from a servant. She cooked when she wanted to cook and would stop when she wanted to as well. She called the shots here, and Callon gladly let her.
We still hadn’t spoken about what happened between us, how I’d possibly saved her from death, but she knew. When she’d been dying, she told me she was ready to go. Now that she was firmly among the living, she seemed to have decided she wasn’t as ready as she’d thought. Didn’t blame her a bit. I wasn’t looking to go either. Most people weren’t.
Issy walked out of the room, her brown pixie hair shining like she was in prime health as she gave me a last wave. Tuesday bobbed around Issy as she made her way in. She swerved in between the fifteen or so people, dark curls bouncing around her head with the effort. She dropped into the chair beside me, her plate holding a single egg and one link of bacon.
Her lack of appetite always coincided with the man standing across the room. Koz smiled at her, all boyish charm. A lion’s mane of blond hair stuck out wildly, framing a roguish face. I’d seen pictures of musicians from the Glory Days who’d looked like him. Or pirates. Koz would’ve fit in well with them if he wasn’t a beast, but he’d been born to a different pack.
Tuesday nibbled on the end of her bacon strip. If she’d had a different audience, bacon strips would’ve been shoved in two at a time. She put down the barely eaten meat and wiggled four fingers. That was the code for how many pieces I’d need to smuggle out of here for her after I was done. With as much food as I smuggled, people must’ve wondered why I was still so thin. Koz would have laughed his ass off if he saw her stuffing her face an hour later.
She tilted her head, not missing an opportunity to flip dark curls from one shoulder to the other. “I saw you running across the lawn last night. I was going to wake Koz. Then I saw Callon running after you,” she said softly, before giving me a moue and batting her lashes, because Koz must’ve glanced our way again.
“Uh huh.” There were awkward conversations and then there was this one. I took a sip of tea, trying to dislodge the boulder that was choking me. If there was one person alive that knew me the best, it was Tuesday. But I still wasn’t talking about this with her. Why? Because it was weird, eve
n for a girl who could tell you how you’d die, and that said a lot.
“I listened for you but fell asleep before you came back. Where do you two go all night when you disappear? What do you do?”
“Nowhere special, and I sleep. That’s all.” I kicked her under the table.
When I’d come down for breakfast, I needed my heaviest sweater. The start of winter up north was even colder than it used to be in the village. Now I wanted to start shedding clothes because I was sweating. In another few seconds I was going to be dripping beads off my forehead while everyone else was huddling around the large fireplace in the great room, listening to us, or at least Koz was. All the others were doing a better job of pretending to mind their own business.
She leaned back to get a better view of my face, then moved closer, keeping her voice softer. “You run around the place, he follows you, and then you both sleep. It’s weird.”
I kicked her again and made jerking motions with my eyes to the others nearby, some of whom were shifters. A beast didn’t need you to scream to hear you from across the room. It was really hard to keep a secret around this place, and breakfast was the worst.
I still wasn’t certain who could sprout a set of fangs on demand. I could figure it out really fast if I wanted, but I hadn’t. When I met a human, I usually saw their death. Not with shifters. I wasn’t certain if it was a deficiency in my gift or that most of them would die after I would. Either way, I tried to limit who I got in range of, because I could only handle so many death visions a day, especially the bad ones.
Deaths definitely weren’t all equal. Some people died calmly in their beds from some sickness that overtook them. It was best when they were good and wrinkled when it happened, and they had people around, helping to ease the passing. The violent ones were bad. Not my favorites, but sometimes quick. The worst by far were the young ones. It was getting to the point that I avoided children at all costs. Luckily, there weren’t too many here, so it had been easy.
“Well? You didn’t tell me what you do,” Tuesday said, nudging me with her elbow.
“I’ve told you twenty times already. I sleep.”
“You really sleep?” she asked.
“Yes. Really. Do you think I’d lie to you?”
She slumped back into her seat and made a clucking noise with her tongue, as if she’d been promised ice cream only to have the last scoop dropped in the dirt in front of her before she’d gotten a single lick in.
“The whole thing is weird,” she said, not being particularly quiet this time around, and a bit crankier. It might’ve been the hunger pains of eating one strip of bacon when you liked twenty.
I took another look around the room, gauging the interest in us. Continuing the conversation any further without Tuesday saying something mortifying was like trying to walk a greased tightrope without falling. But no one seemed to be paying us much mind. They’d probably been disappointed by the sleep answer.
“I don’t know what you want to happen, but it’s not.” Well, that sentence made no sense whatsoever, and I wasn’t going to elaborate on it. Tuesday knew me well enough to know exactly what I meant anyway.
She glanced around, displaying more caution than normal, before turning to me. “Because I’ve found it’s nice to have, and I want you to have it too.”
“He’s not where I’m going to find that.” Callon was good for one thing. Helping me sleep. That was all I wanted from him. A good night’s rest.
“Are you going to find it somewhere else, then? There’s other people here. In the months we’ve been here, there must be someone who caught your eye.”
“A month and a half, not months. And I will find someone when I’m ready.” That probably wouldn’t be until I could sleep through the night and wasn’t being chased by a homicidal maniac. Tuesday might not have realized it, but I was hauling about two tons of baggage. Most men I’d met liked to travel light.
Tuesday opened her mouth to bombard me with something else but shut it as Callon walked in. He had a thing about him that instantly drew attention, and it had nothing to do with his dark good looks. His presence changed the chemistry of the room somehow. People talked a little softer so they could keep one ear open for what he might be saying across the way. They kept a spot in their peripheral vision aimed on him. I knew because I did it too, and for the love of all that was wild, I had no idea why. It wasn’t as if Callon asked every man and woman around to pay such homage to him. At times I would’ve sworn it annoyed him when people hung on his every move. Most days it seemed as if he’d be happier if everyone disappeared, except for a favored few.
He made his way across the room, accepting greetings with a nonchalance born from years of being in charge, heading toward the food platters lined up along the wall. If he saw me, which I bet he did, he didn’t acknowledge it. I returned the favor, because that was how we were. Most of the time I thought we were nothing more than the way our distance during the day portrayed us, two people who didn’t particularly like each other but were stuck together. He kept his space, and so did I.
Until the next night I couldn’t sleep came. Then I’d try to outrun my demons and would find his beast in the last place I ever expected to, in the sliver of time where I found peace. As much as I sometimes despised the man, I found myself longing for the beast who kept me sane. It was the only time I truly felt safe.
I angled my seat so I wouldn’t have to see him, even in the corner of my eye. Tuesday rolled her eyes. I got it. She didn’t understand. Neither did I.
Luckily, Koz was giving her a nod. I knew that nod. I’d seen him give it to her a hundred times before. It meant he was running out somewhere but he’d be looking for her as soon as he got back. And probably not only looking, but touching and other things as well.
She smiled back. I didn’t know if it was because she was excited for all the touching when he returned or if she was about to start shoving food in her face the second he walked out the door.
She didn’t waste any time, grabbing half of the eggs off my plate. I always piled my food high for these occasions.
Three
Zink walked in the door before I’d finished my eggs and right as Tuesday was really chowing down. There wasn’t a pair of eyes in the room that didn’t follow his every move, but this was much different than Callon’s arrival. Zink looked like he’d walked in from a bloody battle. It didn’t show on his clothes or hair or face. It was his eyes that held the heat of war. Zink made a thunder cloud look cheery right now, and it made me feel like a bucket of ice water had been dumped down my spine.
He’d been gone for a few days, and everyone knew why. At least, I suspected they did, since talk tended to leak out about this place like a cracked barrel with a rusted rim. Word was that the strange mud swamps had been migrating. I didn’t know how many there were, but I’d seen one once, on our way here to the lodge. I’d never forget it. It had smelled like a lake of rotting corpses and had little rivulets that snaked out from the larger body that followed you—or at least me—as if it had a mind. My memory might’ve exaggerated it a little, but there was something not natural about the thing, and every hair on your body agreed, standing up and trying to flee the scene.
Zink paused in the middle of the room, looking only at Callon. Callon said nothing as he put his dish down and walked out. Zink followed on his heels.
Tuesday leaned in. “That looked bad.”
“I know.” I sat for a few moments, debating my options. This had to be something to do with the mud lakes. Was it any of my business? Maybe. How many other people had the mud lake tried to follow? I should be in there, just in case.
“I’m going to crash that meeting,” I said, sliding my plate over to her. She’d already been eating off it anyway.
“Get all the dirt. All. Buckets of it. ‘Enough to serve fifty people mud patties’ kind of dirt,” she said, taking a link of sausage.
“I will.” I walked out of the room casually, as if nothing were amiss.
I didn’t want anyone trying to crash the meeting with me. That might complicate things.
Callon and Zink were gone when I got to the hall, and I picked up my pace in the direction of Callon’s office. I let myself in without knocking. If I gave him warning, he’d tell me to go away. I wouldn’t. I was going to hear what was happening, whether he wanted me to or not.
Callon leaned back in his chair. One look and I knew I was going to get the boot.
“Teddy, we’re—”
“About to discuss what’s happening with those strange mud lakes?” I shut the door behind me, making it clear I wasn’t going anywhere. “That stuff tried to follow me, if you’ll remember. I think I should be here.”
Zink kept his mouth tightly shut, but his eyes were narrowed and doing all the talking for him. Zink wasn’t overly fond of me. He hadn’t declared his opinion in a drastic way, only the cold stares when he had to look at me, lack of greetings when he couldn’t avoid me, and overall distaste of my existence. Your basic, run-of-the-mill I wish you’d drop dead, but since you haven’t, I’ll pretend you did-type deal.
If Zink thought that look was actually going to scare me out of here, he’d forgotten our first meeting when I’d been beaten half to death. I could do a cold shoulder all day long and twice on Sunday. It was a warm greeting compared to what I’d grown up with.
Savage One: Born Wild Book Two Page 1
