The rush of the wind flying past his ears, the metallic smell of the blood and the feeling of being in those cold powerful arms woke Livius. The weakness barely allowed him to lift his head up to fix his eyes on the stranger’s face which was tilted down at him. They had probably felt him move.

The rest of the world was a blur. Catching the blur from the corner of his eye made Livius’s stomach turn. There was only the face with the bright red eyes and the blood smears upon it, grinning down at him. This was the only thing that Livius could focus on in the blurred world around him. Livius could barely scream. It came out more like a grunt. The man holding him had a beautiful face. Pitch black curls wrapping around delicate features.

Onyx eyes were shining softly at Livius. The blood smears on the stranger’s face; Livius knew it was his own blood. He felt like a child in the arms of an adult. A sleeping child being carried to bed...or, in his case, to his death.

“We’ll be home soon Livius.” The stranger’s voice was a deep and comforting kind of silk that wrapped completely around Livius and warmed him as if the man were a fire for him to curl up against. The stranger knew his name. How did this beautiful man know his name? The blackness slipped into his head clouding his vision once more and sending him off to somewhere distant inside his own mind making him relax again into the embrace he’d found himself in...