We all ride into the forest at a punishing pace. My ribs and body ache as we push further and faster into the woods. I grit my teeth as we move. I try to ignore the pain as I duck my head down under branches, doing my best to not get knocked off my horse.
The beast stays beside me as we continue running through the forest. My terrible sense of direction means I don’t know where we are in relation to our castle, or where the bodies we left in the dirt are.
Finally, we come to some kind of large house. Bells hang along the porch, tinkling in the slight breeze.
“Where are we?” I ask when we stop, dismount, and tie our horses to the rail of the porch.
“This is one of our outposts. We need to look at the maps of the area to see where the other army could have gone to,” the beast replies.
I follow everyone inside the small building. Steve nudges my shoulder as we approach the center table covered in a large map. “This is also where James and I usually stay when we’re not on scouting missions, or home with our families.”
“You don’t live in the castle?” I ask.
“We prefer the solitude out here,” James replies. “Plus, it gives us an extra strategic location when we need one.”
While they all talk over possible locations the rest of them could hide in, I curl up in a chair and try to shove the images from the last couple of days from my mind.
* * *
Warm arms lift me from the chair sometime later and I curl into the beast as he carries me into another room. While they were talking, I must have fallen asleep. I jostle slightly when he opens a door and then he sits me in another chair.
My eyes fly open when I feel him start to unlace my shoes. I look down and watch him as he carefully removes them from my feet. He continues removing articles of our clothing. I help him when I need to, but sitting still in the chair has caused all of my muscles to tighten and it hurts to move. Especially my shoulders and my ribs. All of my clothes are soaked in sweat and blood. He leaves my bra and panties on since we don’t have any kind of replacements here.
The muscular lines of his body are revealed the more he removes, and I feel the heat of a blush crawling up my face. He moves over to the washstand and brings it and a cloth of some sort over. First, he carefully washes his hands, then somehow manages to wash my hair, brushing it through with his fingers to remove the tangles from riding horses through the forest all day. “There, all back to blonde,” he murmurs while he braids my hair and somehow ties it up on top of my head to keep it from touching my filthy body.
It’s only when I look back into the bowl that I realize how covered in blood and dirt we both are. When he washes down my arms, I cringe as he leaves circular clean splotches among the brown and red-caked skin.
When he’s finished cleaning me from head to toe, he dumps the bowl out a nearby window and fills it again from the pitcher with fresh water. I watch as he follows on his body the same cleaning path he used on me, ending with cleaning the dirt from his feet. He dumps his dirty, bloody water out the window before filling the bowl for a third time, just in case we need it later.
Only when we’re both as clean as we’re going to get does he gently pick me up and place me down on the bed. He climbs in behind me and carefully pulls me into him. I rest my head on his arm and fall quickly back to sleep.
During the night, I wake up and see a glow under the door. Someone has left a torch lit in the hallway. Maybe they never went to sleep. I slide out of bed, careful not to disturb the beast. They’ve left us a tray with some food and drink on it and I gratefully quench my thirst, following it with some of the delicious food.
I’m attempting to use the chamberpot, when I hear from the bed, “Did I just hear you eating something?”
“Yes. Why, are you hungry?” I tease as I stand up and wash my hands the best I can. On my way back to the bed, I grab the tray and bring it to him.
“Thank you, I’m starved.” He digs into the food and finishes everything left on the tray.
Setting it back on the table, I turn around and see the beast smiling at me. “What?” I look down at myself subconsciously.
“You’re beautiful.” He takes my hand and pulls me between his legs where he sits on the edge of the bed.
“You’re a liar.” I smile, and he helps me to climb back into bed. “How long do you think it will take me to heal from all of this?” I gesture down at my body.
“The soreness from the battle? I would guess you haven’t even felt all the soreness yet. You’ll need to see a healer when we get back to the castle. As for what the magic helped fix… that pain will come back at some point, as will mine.”
“Why did we come here instead of going back to the castle?”
“This was closer,” he says simply, wrapping me back in his arms. He runs his fingertips up and down my side. Goosebumps break out all over as he continues the movement over and over.
Eventually, I fall back to sleep, wrapped in his arms.