Page 27 of Crucible
Not for much longer.
I’ll skin him alive if she so much as whispers his name again.
She’smine. Death spared her for me.
“He’s my bodyguard.”
Oh.
Well then, in that case, I guess I’ll kill him quickly.
“He’s dead,” she clarifies.
“Thanatos has him then. He’s making his final journey to the underworld.”
Aurelia casts a bewildered look around the room. “Is there someone sane here, or do I need to find another cabin?”
“You could try,” Thorin answers, “but we’re the only ones who live in these mountains.”
She doesn’t look happy finding out that we’re her only option.
Tough.
She’s lucky she made it this far dressed like that. If the wolves didn’t get her, exposure should have. Unfortunately, her luck ran out when she found our cabin.
Something else Aurelia mentioned pulls at me to act on it, and it sends blood rushing to my dick as I think about chaining her to that bed.
My gaze meets Thorin’s and Khalil’s, and I know we’re all thinking the same.
Aurelia doesn’t realize how far she’s wandered. She doesn’t know that she’s not on the same mountain or that she knocked on the wrong door looking for rescue. She doesn’t know that she gave three drowning men a life raft, and we’d be fools to let go.
“What are you doing this far north?”
“Reflecting and thinking,” she responds with a sneer.
Thorin shifts uncomfortably. Nothing this girl does brings her any closer to him, believing she isn’t an agent of Isaac’s. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means I’m supposed to stay out of sight until no one cares that I pissed in their cornflakes. Because of who I am, I had to go really fucking far.”
Clearly, it was a good plan because I still have no idea who this girl is. We’re completely off the grid here. No WiFi. No phones. No people.
It’s perfect.
We tried normal for a time after Zeke was rescued, but it did not go well. I had no knowledge of the world beyond the Savior’s sadism. Bane and I caused problems faster than Thorin and Khalil could solve them, so they brought us out here where we couldn’t be a danger to anyone.
“So, what did you do?” Khalil prods like a gossiping whore. He sits on the side of the bed and leans back on his elbow.Aurelia tenses at his proximity, but when he makes no move to touch her, she relaxes.
Her instincts are shit.
Aurelia’s smile is back, but it isn’t a nice one. It’s wrapped in barbed wire, just like the woman herself. And yet, all I can think to feel is jealousy. She’s already smiling at Thor and Khalil but not me.
“I put a dumb bitch in her place.”
That causes Khalil to raise a skeptic brow. “And that upset everyone?”
Aurelia scoffs and crosses her legs, meticulously arranging her ruined dress like she’s about to take a photo. “I’d say it comes with the territory, but you can be an absolute nobody and still find yourself on the business end of a microscope these days. Everyone’s either miserable, scheming, nosy, dramatic, or all of the above. I barely notice anymore.”
Thorin starts to pace as he continues his interrogation. “So you had a disagreement with someone—”
