It was always going to be like this. Running was the first survival skill I learned. I’ve been doing it for years—circling the garden perimeter with Gaven at my side, taunting me to go faster or do just one more lap.
The thought of Gaven sends my head spinning. He always seems to find me eventually, but now he’s probably just as at risk as I am.
Wild fear pumps through my blood. I doubt Henry is dead. For all my imagining, I still don’t know how to kill him. If I had something bigger than a dagger, I could have at least tried disembowelment.
A shiver creeps up the back of my neck. Someone’s close. I feel it before I hear it—the heavy sense of eyes on me—of being prey stalked by a predator.
My heart pounds and my blood rushes in my ears, the fear wild and completely uncontrollable.
An arm catches me around the waist and a hand clamps over mymouth and muffles my startled shriek. My back slams against a hard chest and my blade goes flying from my hand.
“You fucking stabbed me.” Henry’s voice is low and full of menace, but I go limp with relief.
My husband chuckles. The sound is bitter. “Oh, no. I’m not deliverance, lovely. I am that from which there is no escape. Not anymore.”
I try to scratch at him, but I can’t find any of his skin.
“You wanted to be caught, didn’t you?” He yanks my hair to bare my neck and brushes his lips over my thundering pulse.
“I wanted to kill you. Was my blade in your chest not obvious enough?” I snap.
He smiles against my skin. “You’re too well-trained to have missed my heart.”
“You’d have to have a heart to be maimed by such a blow. I aimed elsewhere in the hope of hitting something more vital.”
He sighs into my ear. “And yet that is an end I’ve met before and cannot meet again, thank the Divine.”
I stop my fighting. “They stabbed you in the heart?”
“They did what they had to.”
I squirm, but his arm wrapped around my ribs has me in an almost bruising hold and his other hand is fisted in my hair.
“There’s no getting away now.” He clicks his tongue. “I told you never to run from me, Harlow. I know which story you heard at the Raining Star Bar.”
The meaning of his words hits me. My mind flies to the tale of the hunt and the biting and the public fucking—the complete possession. Henry is Deathless, and he’s caught me here during a hunt. They aren’t mindless animals like the Drained, but they still have a wild side and a taste for blood.
I shake my head—because as exhausted as I am, as afraid as I am, I’m more curious and exhilarated. I’m not ready to stop fighting.
“If I drink from you now, you’re mine.”
I shudder against him, warmth rushing through my body in a mixture of hate and desire. How these two feelings can be so close and so conflicting is beyond my comprehension.
Henry skims his nose from the junction of my shoulder up my neck,breathing me in. “Is that why you ran out here on a hunt night, Harlow? You wanted me to claim you. You wanted to belong to me, but you couldn’t say it.”
“I hate you,” I growl.
“Hmm. Perhaps you wanted someone else to claim you. Should I leave you here and see who comes to taste you? You only have to say the word and I won’t do this.”
I still. He’s giving me a way out.
It’s on the tip of my tongue.Stars. I could surrender here, and for all his lies, I know he would master this animal side of himself. But I don’t want to.
He chuckles. “Oh, you don’t like that idea? That’s good because I’m going to fuck you into the ground and sink my fangs into you when you come.” I shiver, clenching my thighs together, and Henry wrenches my head back farther so his dark blue eyes meet mine. “Do you know the only thing that tastes better than blood laced with fear?” He nips at my neck, not enough to break the skin, but enough to make me twitch. “Blood laced with pleasure and fear, and I want all of yours. You’ve stabbed me and made me chase you out here and now I’m going to take what I want.”
I want to run. I want to stay right here. I want him to claim me, and also I want to take my chance in the Drained Wood.
“If you hadn’t stabbed me, I would have let you run, made a game of it—maybe I wouldn’t have fucked you,” Henry growls. “Maybe I wouldn’t have made it official, but now I’ve lost a bunch of blood and I’m hungry and your scent has been torture since we met.”
