He crouched down in front of me again, his smile growing wider, and reached out, running his hand along my outer scarred thigh. I flinched at his touch but couldn’t pull away. He gripped my thigh.
“When I first saw you, I knew I had to have you. It was so easy to rile the others, to start the hunt.” He laughed. “Even easier to back off, watch them play with you, and then intervene just in time to be your hero—to take what was my right as the Alpha Heir to take,” he told me.
“You?” I asked.
It was him. That first night under the full moon.
“All me,” he agreed with a smile. “And everything was going so well. You were behaving most of the time. Your resolve was slipping, opening that mouth was becoming easier and easier…”
I felt sick; the nausea made my head wobble.
“Then that bitch came along. You know you really had me yesterday. That was good acting.” He waved his finger in front of me. “I really thought I’d take you back, and with a little bit ofwork, we’d be back on track. But this—” he gripped my jaw and turned my head to the side, revealing the mark. “This changes everything!” he sneered.
“Fuck you,” I said. “You're deluded if you ever thought I was yours,” I told him, uncaring of the outcome of challenging him. I was as good as dead. Alone. I wouldn’t die trying to please him. I’d spent too much of my life doing that.
“Oh, you’re going to,” he told me.
His laughter was loud. It crept inside me, deeper than the sound filling my ears.
“I’m not going to kill you,” he said, a gleeful smile on his face. “That’s what you expect me to do, right?” he asked. “No, no. I’m going to use you. Really use you,” his nose scrunched joyfully, “hand you back to that bitch, a broken, ruined toy. She won’t even be able to look at you.”
A new wave of panic thundered in my chest and spread through my body.
I was alone, weak, cold…
He loosened his hold on my jaw, and I turned my head and bit him in the space between his thumb and pointer finger. Bit harder than I’d ever bitten before. He screamed, his other hand slapping the opposite side of my face.
My ears rang, and it felt like my brain rattled inside my skull.
I spat out a mouthful of flesh and blood and laughed.
“Laugh all you want; you won’t have a single tooth left when I’m done with you,” he told me, and I heard him, above the ringing, above the pain, and through the blurred vision.
His blurry form walked towards me and then fell to my side with a thud that shook me.
It was difficult to move my head and direct my vision.
It took so long to make out the blob that rolled away from me, but when I did, relief flooded me like ecstasy.
Cole.
I didn’t know where she had come from. Maybe I was already dead, and she was a figment of my imagination—one last attempt to save myself. It didn’t really matter whether it was real or not.
Because she was here.
They rolled, splashing against the edges of the river.
I heard Ashford scream in pain. Watched as the blurry, half-dressed image of Cole rained down blow after blow on Ashford’s face until he stopped screaming or making any sound at all. Until he didn’t even move.
And still her fist came down.
More blurry images arrived, the ground vibrating with them. They grabbed at Cole and dragged her away.
I felt warm fingers tentatively touch my cheek.
“Harriet?”
I heard my name like an echo in a tunnel and looked up.
