My eyes kept roaming her features and the shock of finding her before me gave way to horror at the bruises shadowing her face, her neck. Someone had hurt her. Someone had laid their filthy fucking hands on her and marked her. Rage and vengeance collided inside me, twisting into a cold and hungry creature which longed for the death of the person responsible for this. It didn’t matter if a whole lifetime stood between the last moment I’d seen her and this moment of her return. Nothing changed my desire to protect her. From everything and everyone who sought to hurt her. I will make them pay.
