The Cursed Prince - Fire and Ice (Book One)

Wolves and Promises

Alora drew a dragging step towards me. My blood coated his lips.

"You promised! You promised!" I begged for my life, scrambling backward over the leaves and earth.

"Promises were of glass: Made to be broken."

Alora exposed his fangs, allowing him to breathe in my blood and fear. Blood dripped from my throat, fear from my heart.

His jaws connected with my throat and I felt the tearing of the skin, muscle, and blood erupting in my throat. He was going to rip out my throat. My fingers pressed into his fur, begging, begging, begging. No screams echoed into the night. His maw squeezed all air from my body.

The only pain was in my fingers tearing at the White Wolf's fur, begging for my life. I ignored the pain flaring in my bones and begged.

"Please, please, please..."

I stared into his eyes. Ice blue, so cold, so brittle. Black cores swirling with a devasting fire that would destroy me. The blackness held only one emotion. Death.

Death.

I was going to die. I was going to die.

I sagged against the earth, my fingers releasing his fur. "You want my blood? You can smell it? Taste it? Then devour it. But I die cursing you." I waited for his teeth of knives to crush my throat, waited for blood to explode in my mouth.

Alora dropped my body from his maw like a sack. My knees cracked against the earth that was coated with my own blood from my throat and mouth.

I was going to die. I was going to die.

"Please, please, please," I begged, trying to breathe through the shrieking pain in my throat and blood pouring from my mouth.

A hand caught my hair between its fingers. My hair. Blood-red hair brushed against a porcelain white face with blue eyes and crimson lips.

A man. A man with blue eyes, porcelain skin, and pale lips so pale they are red. With one hand still tangled in my blood-red hair, he slapped me viciously across the face. "Wake up!"

His hand did not sting. I was not reeling. No blood emitted from my nose or skin from his blows. He struck again and again.

"Wake up. Wake up. Wake up."

His hand was soft. Soft as silk. Like satin. Like fur.

Fur brushed against my cheek. "Wake up."

Warm fur brushed against my cheek.

"Girl," came a deep rumble against my ear.

My one eye opened to see Alora, his fangs dripping with blood. My blood.

I—I had been awake. The dream was true, I was lying on the earth, my throat torn, my blood spilling on the earth.

Fingers flew through my throat, quenching the blood flow. "The blood, the blood, the blood-"

"GIRL!" Alora bellowed.

A rattling gasp filled my lungs. I could breathe. No blood filled my throat.

Alora was standing over me, his snout fractions from my face, his nose and cheek pressed against my wet one. My cheek was wet with a warm liquid.

I lifted my hands. Tears and blood coated my palms.

Rivulets of blood flowed over my palms and rested in the valley of my wrist. "No," I whispered. "No. No, no, no!"

"GIRL!!" A roar shattered my screams. Alora's breath was scorching against my cheek. His voice rattled my bones. But the blood remained on me. On my hands. My skin-