Mated To The Dark Elf: A Fantasy Monster Romance (Dark Elves of Protheka Book 1) by Celeste King

Author:Celeste King [King, Celeste]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

18

Amelie

I just keep running. I don't know where I'm going except that I'm following the river because someone has to have built a town near a river, right? It's the best plan I have. For all the time I spent planning escapes, I feel silly for never considering where I would escape to. It was the escape from half of the equation that I was obsessed with. Maybe I just couldn't imagine what a life of freedom would feel like.

As for now, it feels extremely exhilarating and mildly uncomfortable. My lungs burn, my legs are sore, and my feet ache. There's a pinching pain along my side, but it doesn't matter. I'm free, and just that thought is enough to sustain me past any possible pain pushing my body further could ever bring. I'll take the blisters and fatigue if that means being free.

I don't know how long I've been running or how many miles I've covered, but when I look back, the castle has become small enough I can hide the whole city around it with just my outstretched thumb. I've covered a lot of ground since emerging from the tunnel. That feels simultaneously like a lifetime and only a few seconds ago.

But it's probably been at least a few hours. Maybe. I have no way to tell, but I'm pretty sure that it will dawn soon. Maybe then I'll rest. It might just be safer to do so during the day. I haven't forgotten the stories the servants told of sons and daughters, mothers and fathers who went into the forest to work the land or gather resources and then never returned. I have no weapons, and the increasingly muddied garments I have don't even cover most of me, let alone protect me.

But I don't care about what dangers might lay ahead. Freedom is worth the cost, and I'd rather be eaten by a mindless beast than the slave to an intelligent one. And so, I just keep running, keep moving. I'll follow the river all the way to the source if I have to. If I don't find anyone by then, I'll just come up with a new plan. But I'll be the one deciding what to do, and that's the most important thing.

As the horizon starts to lighten and the first fingers of dawn crawl their way up the sky, I finally allow myself the luxury of slowing down. I pick my way through the forest, searching for something that looks protected from sight but unoccupied. I don't want to try and sleep in a cave. Not out of a sense of propriety but safety.

While I may have grown up in the city, I'm not dumb enough to think that I'd be the first creature to take up residence in a cave. Perhaps I'll try to climb a tree and sleep up in the branches.

I never had the chance to try to climb trees growing up. Such things wouldn't be considered very ladylike. While my value to them lay primarily in my virginity, there was still something to be said for refinement.

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