Hard to Say I Do, When I Don't
Chapter 11
Ember caught herself smiling at Mason and quickly replaced it with a frown. She didn't want him to know she was actually enjoying herself a little. She didn't want him to get any ideas for where their relationship was going. They would marry and maybe they would become friends, or just tolerate each other, but they could never fall in love. Ember was unwaveringly certain about this.
Ember was in her human form as they returned to Damir. That was her first mistake. Her second mistake was ignoring thousands of years of evolutionary intuition telling her to get out of there, that there was danger. She simply thought it was a reaction to how close she was to Mason, but had she paid attention she would have noticed the other vampires that were trailing them.
She was on the ground before she could react. A vampire had dropped out of the trees, knocking Ember to the forest floor and trapping her hands behind her back. She struggled to get loose, twisting in the vampire's grip. Cold silver made contact with her skin and she screamed out in pain, her desperate attempts to escape stopped. Her flesh was burning where ever the metal touched.
Faintly, she could hear Mason fighting, but Ember was losing the battle to stay conscious. The pain from the silver was overwhelming and her vision was filled with black dots. She felt herself being picked up, and then the wind rushing by her face, blowing her hair around her head. The silver still burned her skin, mostly around her wrists, and she figured they had placed some sort of hand cuff on her, securing her arms behind her back.
Changing into her wolf form, Ember knew, would be beyond painful. Not only would her paws be twisted in such a way that her shoulders would be, at best, dislocated, but silver burns twice as painfully as a wolf.
The minutes flashed by as Ember fought to stay awake through the pain. It was too painful to open her eyes, so she used her nose instead. She could smell at least three vampires and the forest, but there was a third smell that she could not identify. It was familiar to her, like something she had known all her life, but she could not figure out what it could be. Only when the smell overwhelmed all others did she finally realize what it was.
Ember blacked out as she realized the vampires were taking her underground.
Ember was in her human form as they returned to Damir. That was her first mistake. Her second mistake was ignoring thousands of years of evolutionary intuition telling her to get out of there, that there was danger. She simply thought it was a reaction to how close she was to Mason, but had she paid attention she would have noticed the other vampires that were trailing them.
She was on the ground before she could react. A vampire had dropped out of the trees, knocking Ember to the forest floor and trapping her hands behind her back. She struggled to get loose, twisting in the vampire's grip. Cold silver made contact with her skin and she screamed out in pain, her desperate attempts to escape stopped. Her flesh was burning where ever the metal touched.
Faintly, she could hear Mason fighting, but Ember was losing the battle to stay conscious. The pain from the silver was overwhelming and her vision was filled with black dots. She felt herself being picked up, and then the wind rushing by her face, blowing her hair around her head. The silver still burned her skin, mostly around her wrists, and she figured they had placed some sort of hand cuff on her, securing her arms behind her back.
Changing into her wolf form, Ember knew, would be beyond painful. Not only would her paws be twisted in such a way that her shoulders would be, at best, dislocated, but silver burns twice as painfully as a wolf.
The minutes flashed by as Ember fought to stay awake through the pain. It was too painful to open her eyes, so she used her nose instead. She could smell at least three vampires and the forest, but there was a third smell that she could not identify. It was familiar to her, like something she had known all her life, but she could not figure out what it could be. Only when the smell overwhelmed all others did she finally realize what it was.
Ember blacked out as she realized the vampires were taking her underground.