My heart hammers against his chest.
“Jag puts his name on boxes.I’ll put mine on your heart.”His lips brush mine again, softer this time, but no less territorial.No less potent.“Leave your scars all over me, Heartcleaver.Just don’t leave me.”
He kisses me again, slow and deep and final.A promise sealed with heat and fury.
I kiss him back because I don’t want to pretend I don’t want him.
Because I’m terrified of losing him.
Not to another girl.
Not to my own destruction.
But to Jag.
Jag doesn’t need blades or bullets.He uses charm and seduction, hacking people the way he hacks systems, slipping past firewalls, cloaking himself in manufactured sincerity, and swapping passwords for intimacy.
And Wolf feels too much.He hides it under sarcasm and eccentric clothes, but I see how he takes people into himself.Lets them nest in his ribs.Lets their pain echo in his bones.
That’s why I’m afraid.
If Jag worms his way in deep enough, he’ll rot everything good in Wolf from the inside out.I know that rot.I lived it, and I don’t think Wolf understands how fast it spreads.
So I kiss him like I can root him here, like my mouth on his might be enough to keep him from drifting toward the insidious trap that is Jag Rath.
Pressing closer, I loop my arms around Wolf as if I can shield him from the poison I escaped.Maybe I can plant something real in his chest before Jag gets the chance to strip it hollow.
I kiss him with a warning on my lips.A plea.
He’ll devour you, Wolf.
And I don’t know if I’ll survive watching it happen.
I pull away.Reluctantly.My lips sting.My lungs burn.My pulse hasn’t slowed since I climbed onto the bike.
“We should get back,” I whisper.
He nods once, jaw flexing.He doesn’t want to let go either, but he does.Slowly.
When I strap my helmet back on, he kicks the bike into gear, and we roar away from the cliff’s edge, down the winding road.
Sitka rises ahead, sleepy and gold-lit, the harbor blinking in the distance.
But something’s off.
I feel it before I see it.
A car.Nondescript.Pale gray or maybe white.Hard to tell in the dark.It lingers at the edge of the tree line, lights off but engine on.
I swear I saw that same vehicle in town earlier, just a shadow behind another car.
But now it’s here, pulling onto the road behind us.
It doesn’t get close.Doesn’t flash lights or rev the engine.It doesn’t turn off, either.Just hovers.Creeping.Following.
Jag?
Maybe.Maybe not.But my shoulder blades tighten, and a chill needles across my scalp.I’ve felt this before.The prelude to something awful.
