And there's only one place I know where I can keep her safe and out of view. Somewhere no one will come looking for her.
The irony isn't lost on me. The danger of it, too.
I’m taking Rona home to Saltford Bay.
To my lair.
Chapter Five
Rona
I’msotiredrightnow that my head is about to explode, and yet I can’t close my eyes for more than a few seconds at a time.
I don’t even know where we’re going. For some strange reason, I don’t really care. Darhg makes me feel safe, and I’ll take it, even if safety is an illusion right now.
Sometimes a girl needs to be delusional for a bit.
“We’re here,” he says without so much as glancing in the rearviewmirror.
I glue my face to the window, suddenly wide awake.
The headlights carve through the swirling snow like knives, cutting a path through the darkness as Darhg's SUV crunches onto a long snow-rimmed gravel drive. I crank my neck, trying to make out our destination through the blowing flakes, but all I can see is the dark outline of a single-story building against the snow-covered land.
When Darhg cuts the engine, the only sound around is the relentless howling of the wind through the towering pines. The house, or more like the cabin, sits on a small clearing surrounded by a forbidding-looking forest. It looks impossibly small and isolated. Vulnerable.
I try to suppress a shudder of apprehension, but I don’t quite manage it. He turns to me, his amber eyes reflecting the light.
“Wait here.”
“Sir, no, sir,” I scoff, immediately reaching for the door handle. “No way I’m staying behind in the dark like that. I’ve seen enough horror movies to know what happens if I do.”
“Do you have to be this difficult?” Darhg asks, his brows furrowed in a scowl, his lips pressed together, making the white of his tusks even more striking. He looks so severe and stern like this. Something churns low in my belly at the authority in his gaze, and I press my thighs together in an instinctive gesture. Darhg’s nostrils flare. For just a fraction of a second, so fast I’m not even sure I didn’t dream it, his eyes blaze red, as if lit from inside. Then they go back to theirmesmerizing amber color.
“It’s a talent of mine,” I chirp, trying to divert from my body’s unwanted and totally embarrassing reaction.
Darhg growls—actually growls—as he glares at me. I’m pretty sure he expects me to whimper like a scared puppy, but I just give him my brightest smile, and he shakes his head in defeat.
“Stay behind me, then.”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
He growls again, shaking his head, and I’ll be damned if the corner of his mouth doesn’t lift just a little. So he’s not totally humorless.
Once we’re outside, the cold steals my thoughts. Our breaths are puffs of white in the frigid air, and I pull his oversized hoodie tighter around my head, shivering in my too-thin city coat. It takes me a single second to wish I’d packed boots and mittens, but I had so little time and I was so frazzled that I didn’t even think of the weather.
Not that a Georgia girl knows anything about this kind of frozen hellhole anyway. This weather is simply barbaric. For a fleeting instant, I almost tell Darhg to bring me back to face the vultures of the press instead. Then I regain my sanity enough to follow the towering ogre through the cleared driveway and to the front porch.
"Where are we?" I ask, but he either ignores me or doesn’t hear me as he walks toward the dark cabin with that silent, predatory grace that makes my pulse skip.
"Somewhere safe," he finally says without looking back.
The cabin looks like something out of a fairy tale, all rough-hewn logs and stone chimney, nestled against the pine forest like it grew there naturally. But it's completely dark, no welcoming glow in the windows, no smoke rising from the chimney. Just a cold, empty shell perched above the frozen land.
Darhg unlocks the front door and gestures for me to go inside. I automatically reach for the wall switch, but nothing happens when I flip it.
"Power's off," he explains, moving past me with the kind of confidence that comes from knowing a place in complete darkness. "Generator needs to be turned on first."
I stand awkwardly in the entryway, listening to him move around in what I assume is the kitchen, judging by the faint light shining from a nearby window. There's the sound of a cupboard opening, then the scrape of a match, and suddenly warm golden light blooms from an old-fashioned oil lamp.
