The Calling by Nina Croft Page B

as she lived. But she didn’t argue. Instead, she opened the wooden door and slipped outside.
    Her whole body trembled with the need to run, but she kept her pace slow. She saw no one as she crossed the empty space of the courtyard, one hand fisted in the sheet, the other splayed across her belly.
    She was finding it hard to release her mind from the fear and despair that had gripped her for so long, to accept that maybe there was a future for her and her daughter.
    Once she was out of the Keep, Freya stopped for a moment, gazing around her at the open space. She’d never been outside the walls before. Then she broke into an awkward run, only slowing when she reached the cover of the trees. She found the pile of clothes as he’d said and dressed quickly, in baggy pants and a white cotton shirt that stretched over the bulge. Slipping the leather thongs onto her feet, she picked up the bag. Inside he’d packed bread and cheese, and a canteen of water. She slung it over her shoulder and glanced back. The Keep loomed, dark and oppressive, in the dim light, but nothing moved, and it didn’t even occur to her to wait for the warlock.
    She was free, and if she had her way, she would never again kneel before one of their kind. Never allow a stinking warlock to lay one finger on her.
    Turning her back on the place that had been her only home, she headed deeper into the forest.

Chapter One
    Jarrod forced his rigid muscles to relax, his fists to unclench at his side. He couldn’t afford to let Malachi see the deep burning need that coursed through his veins at the sight of the woman.
    Down in the courtyard below, she’d come to a halt just inside the gate, and Jarrod willed her to look up. The man leading her gave a tug on the rope, and she lashed out at him with a booted foot, but with her hands bound, he easily evaded her. He jerked the rope, and she stumbled then righted herself.
    Jarrod caught his first glimpse of her face. His breath stuck in his throat, and a shaft of pain pierced his heart. She was still beautiful, had hardly changed in the twenty-two years since he had last seen her. Except now, her body was slender, no longer swollen with child.
    Though, while she appeared physically unchanged, something was different. He studied her, trying to understand, and it came to him quickly. She no longer had the cowed appearance of a pleasure slave. And it wasn’t only that she was dressed as a man in dark pants, a cloak over her shoulders, and boots on her feet; she stood up straight and tall, her long dark honey hair loose down her back.
    Why hadn’t she waited for him?
    The question had taunted him all these years, though the truth was, he’d always known the answer. He still remembered his shock when he’d realized she hadn’t even recognized him. She’d knelt before him, pleasured him, made a child with him. Yet, to her, he’d been just another warlock. She must have hated him, and how could he blame her?“You still want her?” Malachi’s softly spoken question interrupted his tormented thoughts.
    Jarrod gave himself a moment to wipe the expression from his face, then turned away from the window.
    Malachi sat in the high-backed wooden chair, his booted feet resting on the desk in front of him, a small smile playing across his face.
    He appeared relaxed, but Jarrod knew that the head of the Order rare-ly loosened the tight grip on his control.
    A shiver of revulsion ran through him as he studied the other man. Jarrod visited the Order infrequently, but each time he came to the Keep, he found Malachi altered. The changes were subtle and slow and probably only aware to one who had known him through the years.
    Once long ago, before the world had nearly ended, they’d been friends. Back then, Malachi’s eyes had been the vivid violet of the evening sky above Arroway; now they had darkened to midnight black, and a miasma of wrongness hung about him.
    Malachi had never accused him out right, but Jarrod had always