Branded Captive (Wren's Song 1)

Their enthusiasm was short-lived, the mud soaked stranger wrenching one of the children by the ear until most of them scattered. It would have been funny had that same man not reached down for another boy, hoisting him over his shoulder like a sack of flour.

This one who thought to steal his workers, was blatantly shuffling off with two.

“Have him brought here.” Caspian leveled the command at Kieran just in time to witness the figure approaching of his own accord.

Under the shadow of a hood, the shine of wide eyes betrayed the stranger’s anxiety. The interloper shifted the weight of the coughing child on his shoulder, the drape of his clothing catching on… well, well, breasts.

It was a woman covered in all that mud, not a young boy at all.

And she, in all her infinite stupidity, was looking him right in the eye.

Caspian smirked, noting he was not the only male to take notice of what had crept into their midst. There were shifts in posture in the men around him, murmurs…

Raw meat. A mud-caked Warrens rat who probably smelled of rotting towels and tasted of sewage. Not worth throwing to his men.

This weakling she-rat was struggling up the stairs, trying to manage the weight of the limp child—dragging along a second, less obedient boy in her wake.

And what did she see when she looked at him? Caspian’s smirk grew meaner. She saw the male who was going to end her for daring to touch his property.

And still she marched, huffing for air by the time she reached his platform.

Just as he thought. A Warrens rat dressed in her finest rags, dripping with refuse and stinking of the shit she’d waded through. A hood covered whatever tangled—likely lice infested—mop she might have, but it didn’t cover the mark on her cheek. Defective.

Stark black ink on snowy white skin. Just as her lashes and eyebrows were snowy white.

They looked clean against all the filth, framing eyes an impossible shade of lavender.

So that’s why she’d been cast into the mud…

A hacking cough unsettled the boy on her shoulder. Easing him down, she held his head to her breast and gave three hard raps to his back. Her second companion didn’t seem to notice, the kid staring up at Caspian with awe.

The woman let out a sigh, giving Caspian her full attention.

And said nothing.

She was waiting for him to speak, completely candid in expression as if it was he who intruded on her. Yet those eyes said that she knew fucking well that she should not have been there.

She was frightened, the scent of fear seeping just enough through the muck drenching her to mark the air.

As well she fucking should be! Rolling his neck in a quick snap of motion, bones popped, Caspian releasing a growl. “And you would be?”

Breaking their gaze, she turned to the gaping boy. When he failed to pay attention, she grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and gave him a good, hard shake.

Brushing off her grip, his face went red as he grumbled, “She’s Jax, I’m Alec and that’s Mikael.”

Expressive, earnest eyes went back to Caspian. She nodded.

Arms crossing the span of Caspian’s chest, he sneered. “I didn’t ask the boy, I asked you.”

“Her brain can’t make words, sir. Only sounds,” Alec piped up, throwing his shoulders back in a mirror image of the man before him.

She stroked her hand down Alec’s tangled hair before pointing at the coughing boy clutched to her breast. Then she thumbed at her own chest before moving her hand in a circle as if to signify they were together.

“You wish to take these boys with you?”

A quick nod was offered.

“No.”

His growled reply did not discourage her as it should have.

The female silently assessed, breathed, blinked, and waited.

“I said no,” Caspian repeated himself, a thing he never did and would make her pay for.

Jax smirked, a stifled breath coming forth.

Had she just laughed at him?

Yes. The slow curl of her lips hinted at the beginnings of a smile. Not quite as collected as she wished to appear, a drop of sweat dripped down her temple, running through the grime on her cheek as she began to sign with one hand.

“She wants to trade,” Alec interpreted, clearly dejected at the idea. “But I don’t think you should let us go. I like it here.”

She smacked the kid upside the back of the head hard enough to rattle him a step forward.

“I do, Jax! I like it here!” Pride wounded, the kid threw a glare at his would-be savior. “Look at all the water! We’re allowed to drink as much as we want.”

Fingers flying, she spelled out words Caspian couldn’t begin to grasp. An argument commenced between woman and child, halting abruptly when the fevered boy at her breast drew a rattled breath and said, “I want to go home.”