Captive Of The Warg, (Wargs of the Outland #2)

Of Ice And Stone

Reia's eyes flew open as the pelt over the doorway flapped aside a second time. Her body turned rigid at once. Not that she'd been sleeping—she'd slept far too long already. A black void filled the lapse between the moment she'd been pushed into the mine and the moment she'd woken here. This small, dark room smelled as wrong and foreign as the man who'd entered earlier without warning. The warg.

But this time, it was a woman who appeared, framed in light. She was carrying a lamp in one hand and a bundle in the crook of her other arm. A harmless looking creature, but a monster lurked within. Did wargs prefer to eat their prey alive like wolves?

Reia scrambled backward, shoving her spine against the icy wall. She knew she looked as feral as a warg, her hands like claws as she snatched the furs up to her chin, a snarl twisting her face. Yet the woman smiled—a sweet expression that caught Reia off guard. A smile so unexpected that Reia would've been much less shocked had the girl roared and pounced atop her.

"Welcome back to the living." The girl set the lamp on the floor and lifted her hand to push the hood off her head. "How do you feel?"

Reia gaped at the ears revealed now that the hood was off. Round, human ears. "You're...you're not a warg!" Reia said, her body sagging as relief shuddered through her stiff joints. "Thank Maeda!" But just as quickly, suspicion rent that fleeting relief. "Are you a captive here, too?" A servant of some kind. Wargs were known to make slaves of exiled humans. Which meant this girl was a lawbreaker of some sort. Expunged from the Iron Girdle for murder or theft.

"I'm not..." The girl dropped her eyes to glare at her fur boots, her chest deflating. She raised a finger to the blunt shell of her right ear.

Reia's brow twisted. "You're not a captive?"

The girl shook her head.

"A slave? Were you exiled from North Gate?" Girls weren't often exiled. Her crime must've been great, indeed. She seemed so benign. Poisoners often were. Reia was the exception, or so she liked to think.

The girl blinked, her face turning wary. And she was only a girl. Much younger than Reia. "Why do you ask if I'm a captive here, too? Is that what the wargrex told you? You're his captive?"

Reia's eyes flared like twin moons. "That...that man was the wargrex?" Beast. Not man. In truth he'd looked a beast the moment she'd laid eyes on him. Had she been more alert, she'd have known him for a warg. He'd filled the room with his hulking, bestial presence. Not to mention the uncanny glow of his tawny eyes. And all that before he'd uncovered his canine ears...

This girl had none of those threatening qualities. "Yes," she said with an unsteady smile. "His name is Bayne Longtooth."

A wargrex? He'd seemed young. Not yet thirty. A young wargrex, then. Her uncle had been young, too, when he'd been sworn in as High Lord of North Gate. What did his age matter, though, he was a slaughterous warg and she was now his captive. Reia swallowed. Well, he hadn't exactly delineated her new, lowly rank among the wargs, but what else was she to think? And the way he'd looked at her... She shivered, remembering the cold hate that'd fulminated from him. It was the same way her father looked when he spoke of the wargs.

She was grateful the wargrex hadn't killed her on sight...yet. Her father wouldn't have suffered one to live even a moment in his custody. Dread pooled low in her gut. Why had this wargrex deemed her life worth preserving? It disturbed her to think on the reasons he wished to keep her alive.

"My name's Saska, by the way," the girl volunteered when the silence stretched taut. She held out the small bundle to Reia, her shy smile creeping back in place. "What should I call you?"