“Zaec, keep your eyes forward!” Ath’asho pitched his voice low, but it was enough to startle all three of the cart’s occupants. Zaec grunting as Ath’asho reached out and slapped the back of his head.
“She was talking to me, sir!”
“I don’t care if she was singing you love songs, boy. You want His Majesty’s wrath on your head?”
“No, sir.”
“Then eyes forward. And you,” Ath’asho added, shifting his bulk on his horse’s back to glare at Maruk. “You keep her quiet and stop endangering everyone else.”
“No, nothing at all like Otaso,” Aida mumbled, burying herself deep into the furs.
Aida screamed as a brand of iron locked around her legs, pulling her free of the pelts. Lifting her high, tossing her about into the air with an ease that defied logic until she came down hard with a pained grunt belly down over Er’it’s thighs. She knew it was him before the world had stopped spinning, smelled him a bare breath after he grabbed her.
Her shrill sounds still echoing through the forest, he punctuated them with a cracking blow against her backside. Before Aida could even drag in a breath to scream her pain, he landed another. Raining blow after blow upon the rounded cheeks, the back of her thighs, her skin was aflame and shrieking in agony. Tears poured from her eyes as she yelled at him to stop though her back arched and slick spread across her thighs. Kal’s hooves danced over the soft littering of dry needles, making her feel ill as the ground lunged and faded.
Sounds savage, he swung Aida around until she perched on his spread thighs. Wrapping his fist around her throat, he squeezed. Snarled in her face as she pummeled her fists against his chest and shoulders. Uncertain if she was trying to get closer or be free as she squirmed.
Other hands grabbed her. Dragging her away from Er’it despite his hold, Ath’asho getting as close as he dared to pry Er’it’s fingers away. Shouting orders at the others to stay back.
Freed, Aida fell to the cart bed, gasping and choking. Limbs watery as she struggled to push up to her elbows, baring her teeth at Er’it when he remained firm upon Kal’s back.
“I told you to never speak that name again,” Er’it shouted. Boot connecting with the side of the cart, he startled all of the animals. Kicking his heels into Kal’s sides and making him bellow, Er’it raced ahead, going deep into the woods where Aida could no longer discern the golden fawn color of his coat between the spindly trunks of the trees.
Chapter 13 Aida
The forest became thick, the prickling bristles of the trees casting deep shadows that did nothing to cool Aida’s flushed skin as she huddled deep in the furs. Arranging the rolling hills of gray, gold, and deep red-orange again and again, they could not satisfy her with their construction.
Maruk had turned away, back stiff as the cart jostled them. Dark gaze darting to the warriors who flanked the cart, widening with stark terror if Aida dared to open her mouth for anything more than the shallowest of breaths. Their driver Zaec stooped low over his reins, the only sounds he made low murmurs to prod Lir onward. Even the horses and warriors surrounding them were silent. None of the easy talk amongst themselves. An eerie wake of accusations and fear leaving the rich forest dead.
Er’it was somewhere far up the dwindling line, a mere glimpse of golden colors in the distance that disappeared as soon as Aida caught sight. The tree trunks were thicker, underbrush dense. Little beyond their winding trail was visible for long, and even that often obfuscated with narrow switchbacks.
She was of two minds and hated it. Part of her yearning for his closeness, even if it was at the hands of his cruelty, the other wanting nothing to do with the man who intended to murder her. Trying to lose herself in the vast expanse of wilderness around her, Aida could only feel lost and strange. Neck prickling as her skin drew tight, the sense of ever watchful eyes upon her. So similar to the sensation that plagued her within the tower, she kept searching the narrow gaps and cool shadows for some hint of her guardian. Not finding any, she turned back to adjusting the furs.
Life was simple, if miserable, with Otaso. There were rules for her to follow and this wealth of feelings and emotions were a long-ago memory that she remembered little of. Defiance, anger, sadness. She’d never felt anything close to this aching need though. While in recent months the scent of Otaso’s guards on the rare occasions they came to her tower affected her, it was not half of what she felt with Er’it. If it was because of her being an Omega, why had she not felt it with Otaso? What was so different between the two men that her body alone could discern the difference?
Huffing a sigh, Aida shoved the furs from her lap and kicked her legs out. Stretching her back with a wince. They’d been traveling for hours with no end in sight. She wasn’t even sure Er’it would try to stop for the evening as the sun drifted towards the horizon, the darkness beneath the canopy becoming fuller.
More trees appeared, their red and gold leaves fluttering down as the wind rushed through the limbs. Their tired groans and sighs made Aida smirk in sympathy. There was a tale in one book Otaso had given her as a child about a hunter going into a forest and finding a woman who lived within the heart of a tree. The hunter hit her upon the head with the hilt of his knife and dragged her from the forest. Unable to find her tree in the cold of night, the woman had died. Perhaps these trees were the same, each of them containing a female terrified of these
