Her hair was in wet strands stuck to the side of her face, and she pushed it away as wave after wave of nausea and dizziness slammed into her. Stumbling forward she fell to her knees, shaking her head and trying to clear her vision.
What’s wrong with me?
She glanced at her side, her once white gown dark from the dirt of running through the woods and also covered in blood. The entire length of her side was red, the material a grisly display of what the slavers had done to her. Taking told of the material, she found a gash in the side and tore it open. Blinking back the double vision, Audrey looked at the wound. It was deep, but she couldn’t understand why she felt the way she did, or what they’d used to injure her.
Drugs.
They’d drugged her.
She pushed herself up, her heart pumping faster, harder, her fear rising, and all of that making the toxins move through her bloodstream even faster.
But the quicker she tried to run, the deeper she tried to go into the woods, the more she felt like a heavy weight was on her, slowing her, making her movements sluggish. She took another step, forcing herself to keep moving, and her foot got caught on a thick root that grew out of the ground. Audrey fell down hard, but the ground was at a slope, and she descended, tumbling down and picking up speed with each passing second. When she reached the bottom of the hill her body screamed out in pain, her vision was a constant double scene of shapes and colors, and she couldn’t hold her head up any longer. Audrey had the will to keep moving, but she didn’t have the strength.
And then darkness claimed her, and she could do nothing to stop it.
****
Styx heard rustling not far from his dwelling, and instantly he went on alert. He’d made his home deep in the woods, and anyone foolish enough to venture this far out deserved death.
He stood from where he sat in front of the fire, grabbed a spear and knife, and tucked the latter at his ankle, between his skin and boot. Tightening his hand on the spear, he stepped out of his cave and stopped, looking around, and listening for any other noises. The sounds of Maccoon birds in the treetops overhead filled the space around him, but he was focused on what was on the ground. It was the creatures that were at the same level as he was that were the greatest threat.
Taking a step out of his dwelling he inhaled deeply. With his senses far more attuned than humans’, he could pick up on the tiniest scent and sight. His hearing was far superior, and his strength allowed him the power to live in this dangerous environment. Styx wasn’t just superior to the others that physically looked like him in all ways, the ones that lived like fish packed together in their stone and glass homes—he was smarter, free from their desires and needs.
Styx’s world was made up many different cultures, people, creatures, and beliefs. Being from the Northern tribe, all he’d ever known was living off the land, being deep within the Asaga Forest and knowing that all others feared his kind. He’d never understood that as a boy, how his kind could be taken as a threat, as dangerous, when they were a family, only hunted when threatened or to feed their tribe, but it wasn’t until he’d heard and understood the stories that were told around the fire at night that he realized who and what he was.
He accepted that. He knew he might be alone in this world, but he accepted it.
Bigger, stronger, and when threatened more violent than anything else, his kind—the Soveign Tribe—was known as savages, as barbarians, and as primitive killers. The descriptions fit them well. His kind knew how to survive in this hostile forest, with creatures that were poisonous, waters that ran red from poisons, and predators that could be just as vicious as his kind. In these woods, in this world, he was at the top of the food chain, and anyone that meant him harm felt his wrath.
Styx moved through the forest slowly, stealthily, and made sure to keep his gaze locked on his surroundings. The tribe he grew up in was hours from his current dwelling, but it had been his choice to leave. After his mother died and his father found a new mate, Styx had felt disconnected, and he had wanted to go out and make his own home, his own family. But with no mate of his own, he’d lived a solitary life. It had suited him well, and he’d accepted that way of living.
But the need to find a wife, to have a woman that was his mate, grew strong inside of him until he felt it like a beast in the very depths of his body.
Styx wanted a family, wanted to find a mate and put a baby inside of her, to claim her in all ways. He needed that now more than ever. He either had to go back to his tribe and claim a woman there, which didn’t appeal to him because he’d felt no connection to any of the females, or he’d have to leave the forest to find one.