The Hunted

by Bethany-Kris

  But who was he to say?

  The servant cleared his throat. “No, my lord, I was told she behaved well.”

  Eryx nodded, surprise fluttering through him. He didn’t turn away from the window as Arelle was led from the stables by the two guards he’d hired to watch her from a safe distance. The maid who had helped dress her in the gown he’d brought came out of the stables right after to trail close behind.

  Even from his position up high, safe in the chambers he would use for the duration of their stay at the stable estate, he could plainly see the gown fit her well.

  Someone had thought to brush her hair into manageable curls that shone in the cloudy daylight. He realized in that moment how hard this would be for him.

  Not because he wanted to kill her.

  But because he’d like to fuck her.

  Again.

  “Would you like help dress—”

  “Leave,” Eryx ordered.

  The man didn’t ask for the prince to repeat himself.

  Eryx was grateful.

  At least alone, he wouldn’t have to pretend like he didn’t have a raging hard-on from nothing more than watching that mermaid be escorted from the stables to the house. Closer to him. Which was a problem, considering how much he seemed to enjoy that. He found great pleasure in having her this close—so close, in fact, that she was entirely under his control now.

  So, why did it feel like she was somehow controlling him? Why did she make his emotions run wild, or perk his cock up from only the sight of her?

  He owned her.

  Not the other way around.

  Eryx would have to make sure she knew it, too.

  Her voice, though?

  It was still singing in his mind.

  Literally singing.

  No, this wouldn’t be easy at all.

  Then again, nothing ever was.

  EIGHTEEN

  Eryx

  IT WAS CLOSER to midday by the time Eryx was able to sit down for breakfast. He was sure the food had been cooked and ready to serve for a good hour or more, but not a single servant of the house spoke about it one way or another, and the spread was still hot when the platters were brought to the table.

  “Duck eggs, my lord, your favorite,” said the woman who kept the large kitchen running at this particular estate. “And of course, the assortment of cooked fish, bread still warm and crisped the way you like, milk fresh from this morning, and—”

  “It’s wonderful,” Eryx interjected, giving the woman a smile. The way she looked his way with wide eyes but a hesitant smile, told him the servants had likely been talking amongst themselves about him once again. Not that anything they said was a lie. All his difficultness, the arrogance and abrasive nature … it was all true. They didn’t expect or wait for compliments from him; he should try that more often, maybe. “Amalia, is it?”

  She nodded before stopping near the other end of the table to drop into a curtsey. He’d never cared much for those, but as the royals do … “That is my name.”

  “We’ll be here a while. I will attempt to remember it. Have them bring her in, please.”

  “Absolutely, Prince.”

  Eryx could have asked for a handful of servants to remain in the dining hall to serve the food and remove whatever they finished with as they were done with it, but he preferred to take his breakfast alone.

  With Arelle.

  The two women who helped to carry in the food followed Amalia when she exited the room. Eryx had already placed a linen napkin across his lap and was reaching for his favorite item on the table—the boiled duck eggs—when soft footsteps echoed just outside the dining hall. He glanced up in just enough time to see Arelle come to stand in the arched, stone doorway of the hall.

  Now, he was fully able to appreciate how the soft fabric of the gown he’d chosen for her to wear today fell over her curves. A material so thin and almost translucent in the light that when she walked past the window, he could see the shadow of her body moving beneath the gown. Dropped modestly in the bust, tied in the back at the waist, and just breathable enough to move easily when she walked, it fit her well.

  Perfectly, really.

  If not for those scales at her temples and the gills—now flattened—at her throat, one wouldn’t know she was what she was.

  A single strip of the gauzy dress was tied at her throat. Like a pretty little bow for him to unwrap, maybe.

  Her face had been cleaned. Those wild red curls of hers seemed slightly more tamed, but a part of him was grateful no one had attempted to tie them back.

  All those things came secondary as Arelle’s stare landed on him at the table, and she headed his way without a second thought. Perhaps it was because the woman was waterborne or hell, it could have just been the fact that she was … so entirely unique and dangerous for him, but there was something about the way she walked. Something in the sway of her hips and the delicate lines of her shapely legs that had him watching her every step.

  There was a strength to her walk.

  A confidence.

  And it made his mouth water.

  Eryx did his best to hide it. He didn’t need to be seen panting after a merwoman like a dog in heat, but he couldn’t help but notice. It was hard not to.

  She had nearly reached the table when the two guards tasked with watching her made their appearance in the doorway. He had a good mind to shoo them away. What could this merwoman really do to him like this with no weapon at her disposal?

  But he didn’t.

  The image of bloodied men was enough for him to keep them right where they stood.

  For now.

  “When did you learn to walk?” he asked her.

  She came to a stop at the other end of the table, and her hand came up to toy with a ribbon of red curls that had fallen over her shoulder. “I can’t remember the last time my hair was dry.”

  Huh.

  “And the walking?”

  Her gaze darted to his. “Sixteen—like all of my kind. Three years ago.”

  “And yet, it’s like you’ve been doing it your whole life.”

  He couldn’t help but smirk at the way her brow furrowed. The little knot in her otherwise smooth forehead said she was confused about their conversation, and the softness in her stare told him that she didn’t know what to do here. But that wasn’t really his problem. Not at the moment, anyway.

  Just as fast as she’d showed the vulnerability, it was gone when she looked over the spread on the table. Without asking if she could be seated, she dropped gracefully into the chair at the opposite end from him.

  Eryx might have chided her for it. Then again, he never cared for royal semantics, either.

  “So, is this how a prince of Atlas spends his days?” she asked, leaning over to pick likely one of the only things on the table she recognized as food for her to eat. The fish. “By being spoiled and pampered in a big house far away from the sea. Although from there, I suppose you wouldn’t have to be bothered by the sight of my kind being pulled from the seas. How many of us do you own?”

  Eryx made a noise under his breath.

  Appreciative and surprised, really.

  The nerve of her …

  “Just you,” he decided to reply. “I don’t have a taste for slaves, really. Bit too much work to keep them as you want them.”

  Her lips formed a grim line.

  “Is that because of your mother?”

  If his new ward felt the change in the air at the mention of Eryx’s mother, he couldn’t say. Of course, she would know … not only had he told her the woman she’d killed was his mother, but she’d undoubtedly heard him calling and begging for Anthia the night she’d been dragged into a dark sea.

  Swallowing hard, his appetite entirely gone without warning, Eryx decided he no longer wanted to entertain while he took his breakfast. Perhaps allowing Arelle entrance to the house and giving her a dress and a brush for her hair had been just a little too much.

  She’d forgotte
n her place here.

  Standing from the table, he tossed the linen napkin from his lap down to the mostly untouched plate. “Enjoy the meal, Arelle. I understand your kind can eat like the rest of us do.”

  That was all he offered before rounding the table and heading for the guards at the doorway. It was only the question she threw at his back that had his steps halting and his shoulders tensing like they were made of the same stone as the echoing hall.

  “What, you can dress me up after you rip me from the sea, but you can’t hold a conversation at the same time? Were you only raised to be talked to, Eryx? Does the problem start when you need to talk back? Seems like poor treatment for a prince, doesn’t it? How dare you.”

  How dare he?

  Yes, she certainly had forgotten her place and he didn’t mind giving her a reminder. Starting right now.

  Spinning on his heel, Eryx lost what remained of his cool, controlled demeanor with every step he took back toward the table. Arelle stood from the chair as he neared, not looking the slightest bit scared of her current situation.

  Which was wrong.

  He wanted her scared.

  Needed that.

  That was the entire fucking point of her being here. Not for him to dress her up into something she wasn’t, and play pretend at the table with breakfast spread out for them both. No. She was here for him to make her suffer for what she had done to him.

  Eryx’s palm connected with her throat, but even when he shoved her back to the table, spilling contents to the floor and staining her white dress with the red wine that had already been poured into gold goblets, she never once flinched. He realized, as her legs widened for him to move between her thighs, that the shoes he’d sent out with the maid hadn’t been put on her feet.

  She was barefoot.

  Like she just came right out of the sea.

  He supposed she had, in a way.

  Below him, Arelle’s hands circled around his wrist as he kept her pinned to the table. Those violet eyes of hers locked on his, and her lips spread in a wicked smile. As though she were pleased with herself.

  Had she tried to make him react?

  Did she like what she was getting?

  It only served to piss him off even more because now that he was touching her, he didn’t want to stop. It was like the second he got too close, or his hands found any part of her body, he became drunk from it. He only needed more and more and more. He wanted to fuck her until all that fight was gone, and she was compliant and soft and perfect.

  That wasn’t right.

  Couldn’t be.

  “What is this?”

  He felt her swallow under his hand, the softness of her skin a match to the silk linen of her gown and the bow at her throat.

  “Why do you make me behave like this?” he asked.

  His questions landed with no impact.

  She stayed quiet.

  That only pissed him off more.

  He’d moved closer until his lower half molded to the apex of her thighs. The skirts of her gown had risen up, but she didn’t seem the least bit ashamed about it. She had to know there were guards watching from the doorway.

  Where was the dignity?

  The respect?

  Or did her kind just not care?

  Because right now, he certainly didn’t … and wasn’t he a little bit like her, too?

  “Well? Will you even speak?” Eryx asked.

  “You don’t want me to.”

  Her words were a whisper.

  A weapon.

  And a tease.

  He let her go, stepping back all at once even though she didn’t right herself on the table straight away. Chewing on his inner cheek, his jaw clenching as he worked over what he wanted to say, he turned away from her.

  “You’re free to look around,” he told her, never looking back, “but you’ll have guards on your person until your collar is ready.”

  “Collar?”

  Eryx didn’t bother to reply.

  She’d learn soon enough.

  It was only once he’d left the dining hall and traveled up to his bed chambers that he finally felt like he could breathe. As though a sense of relief waited for him there.

  So did the maid who’d looked after Arelle earlier. She was just setting the cloak that belonged to Eryx—the one he’d dropped on the mermaid the day before to hide her nakedness from the men on the wharf—on the end of his bed.

  “Have the head of the house cancel any appointments I have for the week,” he told the woman, his gaze never leaving the fur-trimmed cloak.

  “But lord, your advisor—”

  “Have her cancel them all. And leave.”

  “Certainly.”

  A small curtsey, and she was gone, too.

  That left Eryx.

  And the cloak.

  A rage swelled within him at the sight of the item all over again. He knew it was irrational and nothing more than her strange pull on him that entirely fucked with his emotions. That didn’t mean it wasn’t there because it was all too real.

  He snatched the cloak from the bed with the intention of ripping the garment into useless pieces. Because if for some reason he couldn’t work out this craving for violence on the person it was owed, then at least he could find relief in something as silly as this.

  Except it didn’t work.

  The second he drew the garment closer to himself, Eryx found the scent of that merwoman downstairs come rushing with it. That first pull of air into his lungs was coated with her. It didn’t matter that he’d been with her only seconds before. He’d been between her thighs with his hands on her damned neck, and still … still, the smell of her on his cloak sent him spinning.

  That hate in his heart became wrapped in something tighter and hotter. It didn’t disappear, but rather, sharpened the lust that shot straight down to his cock. Eryx had many better things to do than rip his trousers open before shoving his fist with the cloak down the length of his erection. Hell, he hadn’t jerked himself off in more years than he cared to count. Not since his first lover had been bought when he was just fifteen to satisfy any and every need he’d had. One of many women to keep his bed warm.

  He hadn’t the need to do it himself when someone else was always at the ready to do it for him.

  Yet, he barely even considered it. Nothing else mattered when the textured fabric of the outer liner tightened around his cock with his fist. Every stroke came faster. The distinct flavor of her flooded his tongue with every shallow breath he took.

  That threw him right over the edge.

  He spilled his seed into the cloak with a groan that echoed. Surely, the servants down the hall readying a room for Arelle would have heard it.

  Eryx burned the cloak in the fireplace. He never left proof of his sins.

  Ever.

  • • •

  Arelle

  She counted the days.

  One passed.

  Then two …

  Three.

  On the third day’s night, another passing of the sun where she walked the halls of a house that seemed so entirely strange to her with guards not far at her back, Arelle could already smell it in the air. An oncoming storm.

  She’d known it was coming from the second she’d woken up that morning. Yet, it’d become painfully clear to her that the landwalkers around her had little to no idea about what the skies and seas were brewing for them.

  It was later in the day, when the sun began to fall from the blackening skies, that the wind finally picked up. It was only then that the people in the house began to shut the large shutters on the windows. They hid in their rooms all throughout the estate, including Eryx. But she only knew that from what she had been told.

  Certainly not because she was allowed his presence.

  Arelle both hated and loved that.

  Her guards shut her into the chambers she had been left to use after the maids came in to close the shutters. While the rain battered the side of the house and th
e winds howled, she was alone.

  They were afraid.

  She opened the windows and laughed.

  Breathing in the wet air that tasted of a sea she couldn’t even see from her windows, Arelle felt slightly closer to home. She would be a liar if she said she didn’t wonder what mess she’d left back in the depths of the Blu Sea, but for now … it really didn’t matter.

  Did it?

  If they hadn’t gone after Poe, they surely wouldn’t come for her. No, she would have to get back to them. Even if what she left behind might be a more terrifying fate than what was with her here. Still, the sea was her home. She needed to go back.

  As she pulled back inside the window, Arelle noticed the thick wooden lattice attached to the side of the stone of the house and the strong vines growing all through it. She glanced over her shoulder at the closed doors, knowing the guards waited behind it.

  But right now?

  Everything sounded like a storm.

  They wouldn’t even know.

  Part of her screamed to stay.

  She was with her mate.

  Another needed to go.

  One way or another, the land or the sea, she would still die.

  Arelle climbed out onto the ledge and grabbed the lattice and vines. She made it to the stables and mounted the same horse who had greeted her the first morning she’d awoken on the estate. She only knew how to get up on his back because she had watched others do it over the past three days. At first, the beast didn’t want to venture into the storm, but eventually, he went with her urging.

  Then, she heard the bell ringing behind her.

  She’d not heard that before.

  A part of her knew, though …

  It’s for me.

  NINETEEN

  Eryx

  “YAH,” Eryx urged the horse, his palm flat against the animal’s throat letting him feel every single heavy beat of its massive heart. It never failed to amaze him how the animals weren’t as frightened of the storms as people seemed to be.