Zero Affection Behind His Vows Chapter 03

Zero Affection Behind His Vows Chapter 03 Ten Days
He was gentle, he was patient, and step by step he walked me back into the cage.
Then everything went back to normal.
“Callum.” I kept my eyes on the water. “Do you remember that patient I told you about, back when I was still working?”
He was quiet for a beat. “Why bring that up now?”
“I knew somebody once who’d been locked up for years. In the end, she set the house on fire and went up with it.”
I looked up at him. “When I told you about her, you said she was extreme. She had a safe life and wouldn’t take it, and there was no sense being that stubborn. You said nobody in the world is stupid enough to burn down everything they have.”
Callum’s brows drew together. “What are you actually trying to say?”
“I’m saying this.” I drank off the last of the tonic. “For the next ten days, I’m living my own life. Don’t come looking for me, don’t get in my way, and don’t try to put a leash on me.”
“In ten days, if I’m still alive…” I smiled at him. “We can pick your game back up.”
I checked into the only lodge in the Barrens roofed with a whole snowbear hide.
I emptied every bonecoin Callum had given me over the years onto the counter and stacked them in a neat pile.
The sprites floated over, taking their time.
“The snowbear lodge? She really knows how to live.”
“Paying for the nicest place in the Barrens with the lion’s own money. That’s a move.”
“Ten days left. Let her splurge.”
I dropped my pack on the floor, filled the stone basin with hot water, and lowered myself in.
The countdown went on running in my head.
The number stood at 8 days, 14 hours, 32 minutes.
Later, I pushed my face into the downgrass bedding and felt my mouth curve up.
It was worth it.
They kept up their running commentary right above me.
“She’s actually asleep? Nerves of steel.”
“The lion posted his best fighters outside. One at every corner of the lodge.”
“Sleeping with a whole pride ringed around you. That would suffocate me.”
I was almost under when something hit the door hard enough to shake the frame.
I sat straight up.
The sprites started shrieking.
“What was that?”
“Someone’s breaking in!”
“Is it the lion?”
“Oh no. I can’t watch.”
Before I could move, the whitefox hide over the doorway came down in one piece and hit the floor.
Callum filled the doorway. His eyes had narrowed to slits, rimmed in a gold red that had gotten away from him.
A growl rolled up out of his chest like thunder, and every hide in the lodge shivered with it.
“Wren Frost.” He ground my name out through his teeth, and the roar was still shaking underneath it.
His voice had gone raw, and he came into the room one step at a time.
I backed up on instinct until my spine hit the bone post.
He stopped in front of me, and his shadow swallowed me whole.
“Where’s Clara?”
I stared at him. “What?”
“Don’t play dumb.” He caught my wrist and squeezed until the bone ached. “Where did you take her? Answer me!”
I tried to pull my arm back. “I have no idea what you’re talking about!”
The sprites shot around the room in a panic.
“Wait, what? Somebody took Clara?”
“And he thinks the human did it? She hasn’t left this room.”
“The timeline doesn’t work! When would she have set up a kidnapping?”
“Has the lion lost it?”
“Callum, let go of me!” The pain pulled a sharp breath out of me. “I’ve never even met her! I haven’t left this room in two days!”
“Wren Frost, I really underestimated you.” Callum’s eyes narrowed. “You put on that whole heartbroken act, and then you go and take Clara? That’s about as low as it gets.”
“I didn’t.” I got it out through my teeth.
He pinned me down on the downgrass mat and set his claws against the side of my neck.
“Last chance, Wren. Where is Clara? What did you do to her?”
In six years, I had never seen Callum like that.
The two sprites started arguing.
“The lion is terrifying right now.”
“But if she really did take Clara, doesn’t she have it coming?”
“Look at the facts! When would she have done it? She hasn’t left this lodge all day.”
“Could this be a misunderstanding?”
I got the words out flat. “I told you, I don’t know. Callum, look at me. Have I lied to you once in six years?”
Something shifted behind his eyes, and for a second, he wavered.
He looked down at me, and there was something poisonous in it. “Your scent was all over the place she disappeared from.”
The cold went all the way through me.
It was a trap. Somebody had set me up.
“It wasn’t me. I didn’t…” My voice started to shake.
“Enough!”
He came up off the mat with his claws out and closed a hand around my throat. His fangs came down beside my ear.
He kept the pressure right in the hollow at the base of it, the tips sinking in until I could feel my own pulse knocking against them.