Alaskan Fury Read Online Free Page B

one
escape.
    And he could see it in her eyes. 
She’d rather die than let him go.
    Her spirit still burned for
vengeance.  She still swung that sword of righteousness, in her mind.  She
still waited for the moment she could lop off his head, offered in surrender. 
Three thousand years ago, she had been about to kill a helpless man, about to seal his soul to her in eternal servitude, for a misunderstanding.  ‘Aqrab’s
deeds had to have been utterly misunderstood by the small minds of the
First Lands.  It was the only explanation for this lunacy.  He had destroyed a
city, yes, but in doing so, had saved so much more.  The man’s wish had been
typical greedy, self-centered, selfish First-Lander fare.  He had wanted
riches, first.  Then women.  Then he’d wanted the world.
    ‘…the power to shatter
mountainsides with my step, to make the people of the world cringe before me in
awe as I summon tornadoes with my very breath…’ the man had wished.  And
‘Aqrab had given him just that.  And, in doing so, had gotten a divine bounty
put upon him as an ‘oathbreaker.’  The damn simpletons simply didn’t care about the weave he had seen, had he allowed that wish to play out as the man
had wanted it.  They didn’t care about the destruction that one fool
would have wreaked upon the earth, in his mortal grasp for the gods.  They just
saw a djinni step out of the rubble and assumed he had meddled in First Lands
affairs.  The hypocrites.
    And now he was tethered to
the one sent to kill him.  And she still wanted to, with every ounce of
her soul.  He could see it in her pretty brown eyes, whenever she deigned to
look him in the face.  She hated him.  All of him.  She hated his very being,
his core, and wanted nothing more than to have put that sword through his
neck.  He’d tried to tell her what had happened, why that city had
fallen, but she had cut him off, every time.  ‘Twisted words’ she had
spat.  ‘Your kind are masters at it.’
    Damn her.
    He had learned quickly enough
that there was no talking to her.  Once his initial curse had worked— worked ,
praise the gods!—she’d been forced to leave her sword at that oasis to be
swallowed by the sands.  She had been unreasonable ever since.  Utterly
unwilling to so much as listen to him.
    Just thinking of her perpetually
rigid spine, her disdain, her contempt for him made his blood boil.  She
treated him like he was the slave the wereverine claimed he was.
    Three thousand years was taking
an ever-more-unpleasant turn, and this morning was just another indication that
she was finally losing what little respect she ever had for him.  How long
would it be until she started forcing him to draw upon the power of creation of
the Fourth Lands by simply flooding him with shadow until he submitted?  It had to have occurred to her by now.  That she hadn’t begun using him to fulfill her
base desires, like every other First Lander he had ever met, still left him
baffled.
    …but not hopeful.  Sooner or
later, she was going to do it.  He had seen it in her eyes.  And once she
crossed that line, once she forced a wish that had not been given to
her, then not even her precious Lord of War could keep the lords of the Fourth
Realm from utterly annihilating her and all of the weave-tearing ripples of her
ill-begotten wish.
    But at least he would be free.
    Three thousand years was much too
long to spend tethered to a beauty who would rather spit in his face than share
warmth by the fire.  Her nightly slight—where she would not even allow him to
rest in a bed because he might somehow contaminate it with his
presence—was a constant reminder that she considered herself above him, utterly
superior to him in every way.
    Utterly superior…and proud of
it.  Proud of her hold on him.  Proud of the way she could make him grovel on
his hands and knees, with no more than a mental nudge.
    If only the little beauty didn’t
set his damn loins afire