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An Excerpt From: CATCH THE WIND
 Copyright CHARLOTTE BOYETT-COMPO, 2009.
All Rights Reserved, Ellora's Cave
A little noise in the corner of his cell made him turn his head toward it. The rat was back and had brought a friend.
“No,” Jaeger said, shaking his head. “You aren’t going to take a few nibbles out of me for shits and giggles. Go away and take your buddy with you.” He moved his shackled foot but the rodents made no effort to flee. They sat in the corner and stared balefully at him with their wiry whiskers twitching.
If he’d been entirely human, he wouldn’t have been able to see so clearly in the pitch darkness that filled his cell from one wall to the other. He wouldn’t have been able to hear the quiet intake and expulsion of air from the rats’ tiny lungs. His nostrils would not have been as sensitive to the musky rodent scent.
However, he wasn’t entirely human. He wasn’t really sure what he was now, but he knew he had evolved into—well—something other than what he’d been. Something not quite sane.
A muted clang brought his head up slowly. He turned his eyes to the ceiling but the chain attached to the handle of the slop bucket hadn’t moved. Another sound lowered his head and swiveled it toward the thick iron door. Shock registered in his amber eyes. Such sounds were never heard and that meant only one thing: Someone was coming.
He cocked his head to one side, listened intently. He sniffed the air.
Four distinct smells washed over him, bombarded his senses.
His eyebrows slashed together. Deep furrows appeared over his nose as he drew in the scents once more, testing the air just as the rats were doing.
Four smells. Three were male.
The three male scents he didn’t care about, but the fourth scent…
He inhaled deeply, too overwhelmed with that scent, too stunned by it to react to the scrape of feet outside his cell, the mumble of voices pitched low, the sound of a key grating in the door lock.
He could feel the accelerated thunder of his heart as the lock disengaged, the rusted hinges began to shriek.
Light blinded him as the door creaked open to allow lantern light to flood the cell. The heavy chain attached to his wrist clanked against the wall as he threw up his arm to block the harsh intrusion that was painful in its intensity, turned his face aside, closing his eyes. The beam of light drove through his head like the blade of a hot dagger.
“Turn that light down!”
It was a voice he had never expected to ever hear again—speaking with authority he knew all too well—and as the light decreased, he slowly lowered his arm, squinting as he wedged his eyelids open to stare disbelievingly at the two people who had entered his hateful world.
“Milord?”
He couldn’t speak. He didn’t dare. Though her back was to the light, her eyes in shadow, there was no doubt in his mind who she was when she dropped to a squat beside him.
“Milord?” she repeated and he hated the pity he heard in her voice. When she put out a hand to touch him, he cringed, sliding as far along the wall as his restraints would allow.
He heard her whip around, felt the air as it was displaced, drew in the scent of her righteous anger as it was expelled alongside a demand to know what they had done to him.
“He’s shackled hand, foot and neck to that goddess-be-damned wall like a dog!” she exploded. “Where the hell did you think he could go?”
“He is a Shadowlord,” the warden protested. “If he isn’t chained with iron, he can use his powers to…”
“He is in an iron-sheathed cell!” she shouted, slapping her hand against the wall so loudly Jaeger winced. “His powers are nullified in here. Those shackles are meant to torture and humiliate him!” She moved so quickly the warden had no time to jump back, coming toe to toe with him, her lips drawn back over her teeth. “What other evil shit have you done to him?”
“He hasn’t been t…touched!” the warden stuttered. “As you can see we cleaned him up and…”
“Look at him!” she snarled and shame ratcheted through Jaeger. “You call that not being touched? There are scars all over him!”
He hid his face against the wall, pressed his cheek tightly to the cold metal wall for he had no idea how he looked. From the quiver in her voice, he knew it must be bad.
“T…they’ll heal, won’t t…they?” the warden asked, his voice quivering. “Once he has his powers back. They’ll…”
“Unlock those gods-be-damned irons!” she hissed. “Get those things off him before I strangle you with my bare hands, you son of donkey semen!”
Once more, the air moved around him, and he felt her withdrawing, getting to her feet, moving aside for the hated guard. He heard the unknown man speaking softly to her but his heart was beating so fast, so hard he couldn’t make out the words. He could not believe she was here—that any of them were. By his reckoning, it had been seven, maybe eight years since he’d last seen a human face, heard a human voice, felt hands on him. He had to bite the inside of his mouth to keep from crying out as the guard knelt down in front of him to unlock the shackle from his ankle for the iron had long since bitten into his flesh, almost melded with it. As the band came away, he could not keep the groan of pain from coming, and she pounded on that, whirling around so quickly the guard had no time to spring back before she backhanded him aside.
“How dare you hurt him!” she shouted. “Give me those fucking keys!”
He didn’t want her to unlock the manacles circling his wrists. He didn’t want her flesh to touch his. Despite the bath, the shave, he felt things crawling on him, and he didn’t want her contaminated by the contact. As she hunkered down at his side, laid a gentle hand on his shoulder, he tried to shy away from her touch, quivering like a leave in a hard wind.
“I’ll be gentle, warrior,” she said softly. “I swear it.”
He couldn’t help himself. He was drowning in the sweet waves of her soft voice, helpless to ignore the gentle pressure on his shoulder. Breathing freely for the first time in years as she unlocked the heavy iron collar from around his neck, he felt as though he could float up through the ceiling. Slowly—infinitely so—he turned his head toward her. The unknown man standing behind her now held the lantern and its light fell fully on the most beautiful face in the whole of the megaverse. His throat closed as he looked into the tearful green eyes of the only woman he’d ever loved.
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