“I was—” He jerks back as I take advantage of his distraction to stab the crossbow bolt at him. He shakes his head as if disappointed, and with painful ease, he rips the bolt from my grip and tosses it to the other side of the cave-like room we’re in.
“You don’t need to feel threatened by me,” he says with a gentle smile. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
My vision blurs, and I blink my eyes to clear them. “You already have. Stay the fuck away from me.”
It’s agony to move away from him, but he’s too close, and I don’t trust what he brought me here to do. And I should be healing faster than I am.
As I edge farther away from him, something tugs on my right leg.
A silver chain is wrapped around my ankle.
I look from the chain to him.
“It’s just for a little while,” he says, something like sympathy filling his gray eyes. “You need to understand a few things, and then I’ll take it off.”
“Take it off now,” I demand.
The chain is looped around my ankle, but it’s not tied to the wall. There’s a padlock on it, and I’m not nearly strong enough to get it off easily. It’s silver. That’s a big problem. I’ll heal slowly, and I can’t shift as long as I have it on me.
“After we talk.”
“Where are we?” I look around the room again. Aside from a handheld lamp near an open door, there’s nothing else here, and the walls are dark rock.
We're underground or deep inside a cave.
“That isn’t important right now,” he says soothingly.
But panic is setting in at all that rock. “Are we underground?”
“An old mine,” he answers.
I stare at him in horror.
“Just so we can talk. Once I’ve bitten you, we can start our new lives together,” he says happily, as if it’s something I should be pleased about.
I press my back against the wall, panic rising. “Biteme?”
“You were mine first. I thought I was the only one like me, then you turned up at the college.” He smiles. “And I knew it was meant to be. I waited for you to realize it, too, but you never did.”
“I’m not yours.”
His expression darkens. “You only think that because of him. Aren Kasen.” His lip curls, and his gray eyes grow cold and steely. “I found out all I could about the Wolf King.”
I stare at the hatred in his eyes, and I remember all the dead bodies he left on campus. “If you hurt him…” My fury catches me off guard.
I don’t forgive Aren for hurting me, but no one gets to kill him.
My eyes flick behind him.
“You won’t escape, Kat,” he says, reading my mind.
My gaze returns to him. “You had better kill me, or you had better run because I promise you one thing: put one hand on me and Iwillrip it off.”
He smiles as if I haven’t just threatened him, rising from his crouch in a smooth motion. “I didn’t think you’d bleed so much once I pulled the bolt out of you. Rest, and I’ll be back soon. I wasn’t sure if the bite would work with you unconscious, so I’ll have to do it before we leave.”
“You’re not biting me,” I whisper. “Stay away from me.”
He continues as if I hadn’t spoken. “I checked, and he hasn’t given you a mate bite yet, so it looks like I got to you in time. When your bleeding has slowed, then we’ll go.”
