Bound to love |BxB|

Chapter 13

Peyton rattled against me.

He was squeezing himself as close as he could, his hands curled back over to my sides with a grip on my fine, dark shirt. The fabric snapped and cracked between his fingers from the desperate attempt to seek comfort that wasn't bound by any coherence. It was frantic, panicked, and despairing– it was what happened when your fear grew so strong that it stunned you. I didn't need to see his face or hear the words to read him; read the emotions that his trembles professed.

I knew what it felt like, and I knew what he was asking, no– begging, from me.

"Help."

I slithered my hand to his waist, clasping him calmly while inching my face closer to the back of his head. Breathing in and out, in and out, gently massaging his side with my thumb– hoping it'd be enough to let him know that he wasn't alone. That I had heard him.

Meanwhile, the other man in front of us got my full force of irritation, which was in very contrast to my everlasting softness and playfulness toward Peyton. The expected demeanour of mine that everyone else got but a few, and a side in which I'd never address my bird– this warrior, I knew, deserved every ounce of it. I could see it from him; the utter wickedness.

His kind was the epitome of my disgust and hatred for this place, the reason why I was the way I was.

"–Knox!"

I wrinkled my nose, giving the stranger a disheartened glance. More like a fucking knot.

"Impressive." Sarcasm flooded my voice. "Now, would you kindly fuck off?"

The dark-haired man's eyes widened a fraction, and ever-so-little, he tilted his head even further, my answer igniting a simmer of fascination in his features. It made my skin crawl, how he looked at me like a new toy that'd be well suited for his collection of pets. "No, no..." he whispered, cloyingly sweet, "The sunny boy must have a name too, must he not? Basil and Knox've been waiting– what you say–"

He lowered his voice, again turning his attention to the snake even when his gaze was fixed on me, "No, we can't, no, not without..."

He murmured to himself, and eerily, but unsurprisingly enough, the animal didn't react to his master in any way. Its black scales glided against each other as it squirmed, hundreds of them floating by before they disappeared into the bundle of other identical ones that decorated its trunk, not at one point a single word spoken from it. But it stared at me the same way the man did, with the exact same void of emotional depth, as if they were one.

I shook the shivers that travelled through my spine away and cut the man off right as he was about to continue with his gibberish.

"Yeah, no, that's not happening," I bit through my teeth, flashing him a bitter smile, "I asked you and your vermin to fuck off, and I'm not going to ask again. So, unless you want some casserole with a pinch of reptile on the side for lunch, I'd get going."

Peyton let out a suffocated whimper.

His breathing had thinned out and accelerated even though he had caught on to my attempts to calm him down, and was trying to mimic my smooth and slow pattern of inhales. Still, he needed my attention, and it was eating at me to not be able to comfort him better. But the stranger seemed a much bigger danger, and for now, my soothing touches were all I could do. Something about this man just irked me...

Knox scrutinised me for a while, cocking his head at me with broadening curiosity. And then he finally raised his gaze away, the absence of his intimidating stare releasing a hefty weight from my shoulders.