The Wild Hunt (Downworlder Series, #1)

Chapter Eleven: A Beast Cornered

"You going to be alright?" Miles asked with a softer tone, not pushing me about what I'm sure was out of character behavior. I appreciated his willingness to respect people's privacy, he figured if it was something important I would tell him and that had been true enough up to this point.

I nodded my head, "Yeah. I'll be fine. It was a close call, I got spooked is all." I dismissed his concern. I really wanted to be alone and I was afraid that Octavia's men might show up and find him hanging out in my room. That would be bad news for the both of us, very bad.

"Yeah it was." He confirmed with a lifted brow in my direction. The same look I would get from my mom when I had done something I wasn't supposed to and had been warned otherwise, "No more short cuts, princess. At least not until Octavia handles this new Doyen, which I'm sure won't be too long. The streets are crawling with her men." He warned with a looked that said I needed to listen to what he was telling me.

I gave him a small defeated sigh, "Fine. No more short cuts. I'm pretty sure I've learned my lesson."

"That's my girl." He quipped with a playful wink in my direction, trying to lighten the heavy atmosphere in my room. I shook my head, doing my best to cover up the urge to smile, smiling after what had happened seemed wrong, too soon somehow. Someone had been killed, I had seen the scattered chunky bits of who they had used to be and I had almost been taken myself. Yeah, it was still too soon for smiles.

Miles ducked back out of the window, "This has been a lovely visit but I better get going, princess. Try not to miss me too much."

"Yeah, I'll try to contain my tears until you're gone." I replied dryly as I moved across the room to close the window behind him as was our usual routine. He stared in at me from behind the glass, pursing his lips and making a kissy face at me. Probably just to see me smile, he took that as a sign of my well-being. I shook my head this time gifting him with a small smile, "Fuck off." I called to him as he smiled and dropped out of view into the darkness below.

I turned away from the window with a sigh. I stripped out of my clothes as quickly as I could. The scent garbage, death, and the wild man still clung to them and I didn't like that. I tossed them away from me in disgust before I crawled into my bed. I didn't want to think about him or anything else that had happened tonight. I wanted to close my eyes and dream of home, a place and time when the worst thing that could have happened to me was the cafe running out of moonpies.

I closed my eyes and snuggled into my sorry excuse of a blanket, forcing myself to welcome the stillness of sleep. I noted in the back of my mind as I drifted off that I could still smell lightning, frowning slightly.

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My restless sleep was abandoned when I awoke to a rough banging sound. I rolled over in confusion, looking about myself to figure out where it was going from. It only took a couple of seconds to figure that the knocking sound was coming from my door which took me by total surprise. The girls were still getting used to the new rule, fifty percent of the time they actually remembered to knock before entering. I pushed up from my bed, glancing at the clock on my cellphone. I had only been asleep for about two hours and that had me groaning in annoyance, not only was I physically drained but I was emotionally drained as well. I grabbed a shirt from a pile at the foot of my bed, sniffing it once before deeming it clean enough as I slipped it on over my head.

The knock came again this time a bit harsher, "Just a minute!" I called back as I searched the darkness of my room for a pair of clean pants. When the impatient knock came again it practically rattled my door off it's hinges, "Hold your damn horses!" I gritted my teeth as I snatched up the pair of pants I had been wearing last night and slipped them up my legs, struggling to do them together as I marched to the door. I really wasn't in the mood for visitors today, not after everything that I had been through in the past twenty four hours. I simply wanted to be alone in the safety of the four walls of this musty attic, in the silence and darkness where I could contemplate how my life had taken this particular turn.