Chapter 15: Chapter Fifteen

As she walked farther into the woods with nothing but the brightness of the moon as her guide, Saffron couldn’t help but wonder if Kiera’s story about the monsters lurking in the woods was true.

There was a stillness in the woods that unnerved her and made her question her decision to take this route back to the slave quarters. But she knew that it was either going through here or taking the main route back to the quarters and risking running into the Alpha’s men or the big bad wolf himself.

And after what she had seen earlier, and her interaction with Jericho and his friends, the last thing she wanted was to run into the Alpha when she was only a few hours away from making her grand escape.

She knew that encountering him after what she had done to Jericho would only spell out trouble for her, and only a miracle would have her escaping such an encounter unscathed.

So, the woods it was.

It was so quiet for a while that Saffron thought that she had gotten lost until she stumbled out into a clearing.

She could hear sounds of the islanders having sex, and if she wasn’t so damn terrified for her life, she would have scoffed at the absurdity of it.

It was freezing cold outside, and even though she barely felt it, Saffron could admit that there was a pinch of coldness in the air that made her feel quite uncomfortable.

She tried not to look at any of them closely as she made her way towards the slave quarters, since she had no interest in their sex life or finding out their identity.

But as she got to the edge of the woods, a soft sound made her look up just in time to make eye contact with her mystery guy.

He was leaning against a tree, his pants pooling at his feet. There was a female kneeling at his feet, right between his legs, her head bobbing up and down as she sucked him off.

Saffron froze, an inaudible gasp escaping from her parted lips.

She couldn’t look away, neither could she move any of her muscles, and her mystery guy didn’t break eye contact with her either.

He didn’t look shocked to see her or embarrassed to be caught with his pants down—literally. Instead, he looked smug and blissed out as the girl went to town on him.

Saffron couldn’t see who it was from that angle, and she was glad for it. She had no idea what she would do if she knew the identity of the female.

‘Mine!’ the voice declared in a distressed voice, its tone pained and full of so much anguish. Saffron felt like she was being torn apart to pieces on the inside.

On the outside, her skin felt so hot and prickly, jealousy writhing all over her body.

It made no sense to her how the voice felt such a claim of ownership towards him when Saffron didn’t even know his name or who he was.

The jealousy made her feel stupid. And coupled with the voice’s reaction and her own broken heart? It all made her feel like she was finally losing her mind.

She watched as he quirked his eyebrow at her, totally oblivious to the inferno that raged on within her.

He didn’t call out to her, alert his companion of her presence, or even wave her off. All he did was stare right at her, as if he was daring her to make a move.

She could feel her face heating up and beads of sweat forming at the base of her spine and her forehead despite the brisk cold.

Why couldn’t she leave?

She shouldn’t be standing here, watching this, intruding on a private and intimate moment, but her traitorous body refused to move.

Her legs wouldn’t budge an inch, no matter how much she willed for them to move.

She began to pant, her body reacting to the scene before her, as a loud moan ripped out of his chest, his body shuddering as he began to find his release.

She watched transfixed, as his hands dug into the girl’s hair and pulled her head back, so he could come all over her face.

At the sight of his release coating the girl’s face, tears sprang from her lids, rolling down her cheeks in heavy sheets.

‘Mine!’ the voice cried out, its pain a visceral entity that lashed out at Saffron, making her grunt and stumble onto her feet, a sharp pain blossoming against her temple.

Wheezing against the pain that assaulted her, Saffron blinked back her tears and rose to her feet.

She glanced up at her mystery guy to find his head thrown back against the tree, his eyes closed as he enjoyed the post-orgasmic bliss of his tryst.

The female with him had now risen to her feet and begun to take off her clothes.

Saffron closed her eyes and took a deep breath, willing for the raging storm inside of her to calm down.

She had seen enough.

It still made no sense to her, her negative reactions towards seeing him with another woman.

She had no rights over him and neither did the voice, seeing as it only lived inside her head and wasn’t an entity in itself.

Or, had her crazy finally manifested into something else?

Or was she projecting her hurt feelings towards the voice, and everything was just happening inside her head?

Releasing a breath, she turned and bolted for the path that would lead her to the sanctuary of her room, just as his eyes snapped open and met hers in a searing gaze that had her insides messed up.

She made it all the way to the pond behind the slave quarters before she heard someone call her name.

Ivan!

She could never forget the sound of his voice.

She cursed under her breath as she turned around, her body still shaking from the aftermath of seeing her mystery guy with another woman.

This time around, though, her body was shaking for another reason that had nothing to do with her mystery guy or the woman he was with but had everything to do with her eavesdropping on the Alpha’s conversation earlier.

And from the evil glint in the Alpha’s right-hand man’s eyes, Saffron knew that he too was thinking exactly about that.

Unwittingly, the scene from the Alpha’s office flashed through her mind’s eye, eradicating the thoughts of the mystery guy and his woman.

But instead of the man’s bloody body tied to the Alpha’s office floor, it was hers in his place, dripping blood all over the floor.

Without a second thought, she turned and ran right back into the woods, towards where she had come from.

If she was lucky, he would still be there and be able to save her life.

She hated the thought of seeing him again after what she had just witnessed. But this was a life-or-death situation.

Ivan would kill her if he caught her.

But before she could make it back into the woods, Ivan tackled her from behind.

And the last thing she saw was the determination in his dark eyes before everything went dark.