Chapter 47: All Bounds work
Stefan’s POV
The fight happened the way everything on this planet seemed to happen - it was loud, brutal and soaked in blood.
It went on for a short while and It didn’t end quietly.
I watched from my safe, cowardly distance as the last stretch of it played out, my jaw dropping in astonishment.
Belladonna’s display was a show to pay for.
Her jaguar form tore through three more wolves in the space of a few heartbeats, jaws closing around one’s throat with a wet crack that made my own throat tighten in sympathy.
But then, mid-lunge, her body rippled and folded back inward, the fur receding, claws retracting into fingers, until she landed on two human feet in the middle of the carnage. She was breathing hard, blood streaked across her bare arms.
And she was stark naked...
"Jeez... Full package right there!" I swallowed hard but then I knew I shouldn’t be staring. We were in the middle of a war. Nakedness shouldn’t be given priority at the moment.
I shook my head as if to shake off the lewd thoughts already forming in my head.
A warrior tossed her something without being asked - an axe, heavy and curved, already stained dark along its edge from earlier use.
Belladonna caught it one-handed, spun it once to settle the grip, and waded straight back into the fight on foot, swinging in wide brutal arcs that dropped wolves two at a time. No hesitation in the movement. No wasted motion. Just clean, mechanical violence, like she had done this exact thing a thousand times before and expected to do it a million more before she died.
By the time the last wolf went down, whimpering, then silent, the whole clearing had gone eerily quiet except for labored breathing and the wet, bloody smell hanging thick in the air.
The warriors emerged from the aftermath drenched - their fur was gone now, their skin bare again but there wasn’t anything sexually attracting to see. They were soaked ans dripping with blood from shoulder to feet.
Some of them were nursing shallow cuts while others were completely unmarked despite the chaos. Belladonna stood in the center of it all, her axe still dripping, her chest heaving, her face utterly unreadable despite everything that had just happened around her.
She barked something sharp in that clipped growling language as she gathered her warriors into a tight formation with nothing but her voice and the weight of her presence.
After a few seconds of her mouth moving, Lily broke away from the group and came striding toward where the slaves had gathered, faces pale, some visibly shaking from having watched fifty giant wolves get torn apart twenty feet away from where they stood frozen with fear.
"The General requires time to clean up," Lily said, sharp and businesslike, like she hadn’t just witnessed the same bloodbath the rest of us had.
"We stop here a while. Follow the warriors finding a suitable spot." She ordered the slaves.
I peeled myself deeper into the cluster of slaves the second the words left her mouth with my shoulders hunched, doing my absolute best of appearing like a man who had always belonged among manual laborers and never once ridden a general’s horse or broken her heirloom jewelry.
Better to disappear into the crowd than stand around waiting for Belladonna’s memory to catch up with her temper.
~~~~~~~~~
A few minutes’ walk brought us to a stretch of river. Cool water was rushing fast over the smooth stones, sunlight finally breaking properly through the canopy overhead and scattering gold across the surface.
The whole camp settled into an efficient rhythm almost immediately - the slaves were scattered around, some carrying water pots, some scrubbing dried blood and sweat off the horses’ flanks while the warriors were kneeling in pairs along the bank, washing weapons and skin alike in the cold current.
In as much as I would love to enjoy the naked, glorious view, I reminded myself that I wasn’t a pervert.
I found a spot slightly removed from the actual labor and stood there, with my arms crossed and I began doing an excellent impression of a man supervising very important work while contributing exactly nothing to it myself.
The System pinged somewhere in the back of my skull, some quiet reminder about the primary mission still ticking down, and I ignored it completely, filing it under Problems For Later Stefan.
That was when I saw her.
Jonquil... She was walking back up from the river’s edge, looking freshly cleaned with water still beaded along her collarbone. I could see that her hair was hanging loose for once, freed from the tight ponytail style she usually kept it pinned into.
She was dressed now. But I noticed something.
I blinked, then looked again, because something about the sight didn’t sit right.
One whole side of her hair had been hacked short, jagged, uneven - clearly not a choice.
That was clearly the work of a blade that had swung too close during the fight and taken a fistful of hair along with whatever else it might have been aiming for. My stomach twisted at the sight of it, something uncomfortable and unfamiliar settling low in my chest that I didn’t have time to properly examine.
Before I could decide whether to say anything, a slave walked up beside me, his eyes flicking anywhere except directly at my face - the ground, my shoulder, a spot somewhere over my left ear, besides my head and all.
"You should work too." he blunted out, his voice coming out low, nervous, barely above a whisper.
I turned to look at him fully, genuinely stunned by the audacity of a man who couldn’t even manage eye contact somehow finding the nerve to give me an order.
"And why should I do that?" I asked, producing the words dramatically slow so it would land as exactly as I wanted.
And God, I love the reaction I got. The guy’s gaze dropped lower, his shoulders slagging very obvious, I had to give the guy some accolades for his tenacity, he still managed to mumble;
"Because, all Bounds work. You are a Bound too."
My eyes flashed red.