“But I don’t need to rely on words when I can scent the lie on you.”
My stomach tightened at that, heat rushing unexpectedly to my cheeks as his gaze held mine, steady and unwavering.
“What are you hiding, little dove, um?”
The name sent a shiver down my spine, the sound wrapped in that low, rumbling tone that seemed to settle far deeper than it should have. And before I could react, I felt the lightest brush of contact as the back of his fingers traced slowly along my bare arm.
Not enough to be inappropriate but more than enough to be deliberate. I inhaled sharply, my body reacting before my mind could catch up, and his gaze flicked briefly to the movement, catching it.
“You don’t feel cold?” he asked, his voice quieter now, almost curious. As though there was something beneath it that suggested he already knew the answer. Then, tilting his head slightly, that faint smile returning, he added,
“Or do I intimidate you that much?”
He never got his answer, not when something rippled through the room. A darkness that seemed to charge the air, thickening it at the same time, something cold slipped down my spine. Something almost familiar in a way that made my pulse spike before I could fully understand why. As for Walder, he went completely still, his attention fixed forward, narrowing at the entrance as a figure started to emerge as the crowd parted. Then came the voice, dangerous and devastatingly familiar as it cut cleanly through the space.
“I believe you have something that belongs to me.”His voice blurred the line between human and demonic, proving that both existed within him at once.
My breath caught instantly, my body reacting before my mind could catch up, every muscle locking as recognition hit. Because I knew that voice. Of course I did. I would know it anywhere, fully expecting it to dominate my dreams for the rest of my life.
Which was why my gaze shot to the doorway, only to find that this was actually happening. That he had found us… had found me. As there he was, framed in the entrance like something carved from shadow and fury. His presence swallowed the space around him as his expression sharpened into something far more dangerous than anger alone.
Oblivion.
Who didn’t look like he had come here toaskfor me back, but more like someone who had come here…to take.
The change in the room was immediate.
The music cut, and the conversation died mid-sentence. As though the sound itself had been ripped from the air, and what followed was not silence, but something far heavier. Something that settled over the space with a suffocating weight.
It rolled outward from him.
A dark, shifting presence that crept along the floor like a living thing, thick as smoke, yet heavier, denser. As though the shadows themselves had been called to heel, spilling across the ground in a slow wave from which people instinctively recoiled. Bodies moved without thought, stepping back and creating distance, because no one wanted to be too close to whatever that was.
Too close to him.
The air tightened with it, pulsing faintly, as though something vast and dangerous sat just beneath the surface, something barely contained. I could feel it in the way my breath caught, in the way my entire body tensed as that same pull coiled low within me. As if something inside me recognized exactly what stood before us.
His anger wasn’t loud, but then,it didn’t need to be.
It pressed outward in waves, controlled but only just, like something straining against a leash that had already begun to fray. It was a true sense of foreboding that surrounded him, enough to make the entire room hold its breath.
And I knew, without question, that I should have been terrified.
Because everything about this felt dangerous.
Overwhelming.
Uncontainable.
And yet…
Even as that fear curled through me, tightening its grip, there was something else there, too. Something that refused to let me look away. Like a small animal caught in a predator’s sight, knowing that one wrong move and it would suddenly pounce.
As for everyone else, no one moved toward him.
No one challenged him.
Because no one here was foolish enough not to recognize what he was.
