Fingers spread wide, I clutched at the bannister, legs all-but boneless until I tore my eyes from that narrowed, slitted glare. Slipping into the shadows, I fled. Bitingly aware that the hunt had merely begun anew, and the time for apathetic indifference was over.
The next move wasmine.
The half-dozen steps to his bedroom were a marathon in restraint.
A careful opening bid in a game I was going to lose.
I knew it.
Didn’t bother to question the outcome any more vigorously than I tried to stop the flow of time.
But in that acceptance, there was a tiny measure of power. In the knowing that I might trade with the only coinage I had left, that I would lose with intention butalsoreclaim something of myself.
I spilled inside the room that had been my tomb and shut the door with a haggard breath. Grateful for a moment to think.
It didn’t last.
I gasped—the bedroom was transformed.
Gone were the stacks of dirty dishes, the piles of laundry and empty bottles of wine. The windows had been thrown open, carrying off the scent of stale fucking with a gentle afternoon breeze. His bed had been redressed in handsome, dark sheets that beckoned me to sink into that welcoming embrace and forget my frivolous, doomed flight. And there, centered on his desk, the opened bottle of Tritan summer wine, a platter of fresh fruit, and baked goods were waiting to sate my endless hunger.
“Fuck,” I whispered, because Alicia was equal parts miracle worker and traitor.
A traitor who hadn’t deserved a second chance, but in my bottomless apathy, I’d given her exactly that. Trusted her to keep a deadly secret on the off chance that she wouldn’t sell out a people not her own for a pat on the head.
Gait unsteady, panic bubbling at my throat, I cursed myself for every moment squandered on selfish, decadent indulgence. That I had dared to allow myself the luxury of grief, drugging myself with elite fumes just because I couldn’t bring myself to look at my gruesome inheritance.
But it was right where Alicia had left it—tucked neatly beneath the captain’s desk. Out of sight, but not quite hidden.
Sasha’s parting gift.
Either a solution to all my many unanswered questions, or merely the opening bid in yet another Caledonian game.
A sound from beyond that closed door made me lurch into action.
Unhurried, measured steps creaking up the stairs. Each footfall heavy with confidence as he closed the distance between us. Enjoying the moments between, he strummed the bond anchored in my heart us just to stoke the whirling panic sloshing in my gut.
Just to let me know…he was coming.
Moving before he’d been able to master himself, the man and the monster now shared a single goal. Hunting together, as one, to reclaim but one prize.
Me.
Asher wanted my power, my body, and my obedience.
But the berserker wanted my blood… my future.
Together, they would takeeverything.
Panic clawed at my throat, a strangled squeal ripping free of chapped lips as I lurched forward.
There wasn’t enough time!
I needed more. A distraction that would allow me to open that damned box.
Whatever it took.
Shaking with the force of my heart hammering at the backside of my ribs, I stooped to seize the battered, simple case, darted into his bathroom, and dumped it in the shower stall before I let the panic bubble over.
