Bound Trilogy: Bound: A Supernatural Story (WLW)

Chapter Twenty-Three

Bast woke with the vague sound of someone calling her name. Someone who needed her help. For her to... Protect! She tried to step forward, but felt a sudden pain in her gut and leg. Oh shit...!

She'd broken her leg in the fall and her abdomen was... Wait... What? She gazed down at her stomach and found it healing, then to her leg and watched as the bone began to recede back into her skin. The flesh turned pink as it began to close and scar over. What's going on?

Bast lifted her head as she scented someone familiar. Peaches drifted through the air and she saw Kuba standing next to her. He gave her an odd smile and she tried to shrink away, but then realized her arms were bound over her head against a tree.

Struggling to break free, she barked at him with a snarl. "Let me go! She needs help!"

"Relax, no harm will come to your mate. Serafin is under explicit orders from me and your mother not to hurt her." He moved closer. "We know you'll need her and your mother and I approve. An elite Argyris..." He shook his head with a sigh and gave her an expression that told of just how impressed he was with her mate. "Not bad, kiddo. She will serve us all very well."

Bast felt bile rise in her throat and fought not to let it come out. Kuba's smile never faltered, like he knew exactly what she was thinking as he sat down in front of her on a fallen tree. She felt her claws beginning to extend, but fought like hell to suppress the pain they brought. Thinking tactfully, she knew she needed to use this to her advantage.

"Yes, your mother is still alive. If you had just stayed with the humans we left you with a bit longer, then you could have been raised through your teenage years with her." He looked her up and down, then moved her shirt to the side to examine her abdominal wound. It was now fully closed and fresh, steaming skin took its place that was slowly turning more toward the shade of her natural skin colour. "In a way."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Bast pulled back as far as she could and snarled as she waited for him to take his hand away. "My mother died when I was fourteen months old. And the people you left me with? The Livingstons abducted me and cut my hair when they killed her! They basically beat and used me as a slave all while keeping her pelt above their fireplace!"

"Well, yes and no." He stood and walked over to the other end of the fallen tree, placing something inside a bag from his pocket, then turned back toward her. "She's of direct descent to your ancestors. So, she reincarnates some time after death. Not in feline form again, sadly. You really don't know anything about your own kind, well kinds, do you?"

Bast gulped and glared at him. Whose fault is that? She could feel the confidence swirling through the air off of him and felt the trickle of cold sweat down her back. "What have you done?"

"What was necessary." He appeared appalled at the thought she didn't understand what was going on and walked back over, sitting down on the log once more. "The foxes have reigned over the land dwellers for entirely too long. They are very...presumptuous and pious."

"Aren't you one of them? How can you say that about your own--"

Bast cried out as an intense wave of heat and pain hit her. She felt her spine shifting about under her skin and beads of sweat broke out, trickling down her forehead. Kuba stepped closer and cut the ropes on her wrists, sending her collapsing to the ground. If she thought all the pain she'd faced in her life was bad, this was so much worse.

Her blood felt like it was boiling and her insides felt like they were fighting to get out. Or rather, like something within her was fighting to get out. Still, one thought ran through her mind: Protect!