A twig snaps, and I’m suddenly reminded that I’m not alone. But if Thorin and Khalil are over there, then that must mean…
I spin around just as his face comes into view.
“Zeke?” He doesn’t answer, and something about the anesthetized look in his eyes—as if his soul had been wiped of feeling—makes me uneasy, but I’m still relieved to see him. I can already feel some of my worry melting away now that I can see he’s…mostlyokay. His dark hair is plastered to his forehead and curling around his ears. He’s shirtless, and I can see bruises from earlier as well as fresh red ones forming. What the hell? Had he gone ten rounds with a brick wall since leaving the cabin? “Are you okay? What happened? Where did you go?”
I reach out a hand toward him despite the malevolence rolling off him in waves and to my surprise, he reaches back.
Our fingers are stretching toward one another, lightning flashes, and my stomach pitches for some reason. The tips of our fingers just barely meet when Khalil screams again. “Aureliaaaaaa!”
The desperate cry is dosed with panic unlike anything I’ve ever heard from him before, so full of fear that it easily rises above the rain and roaring river.
Startled by that unbridled scream, I drop my hand before Zeke can seize it and turn away in search of whatever caused it. When I don’t see anything except for Khalil and Thorin standing unharmed at the very edge of the opposite bank, my confusion spikes. “Are you okay?” I shout.
Khalil screams his answer, but thunder rolls and drowns it out.
“I can’t hear you!” I shout as I walk away from Zeke, who still hasn’t spoken a word to me, and toward the river. Khalil yells again…something about Zeke. My side of the river is a little higher than they are so it’s even harder for his voice to carry. I decide to take a shot in the dark. “Yes, it’s Zeke! I found him!”
“That’s not Zeke!” I hear echo across the storm this time.
Glancing over my shoulder, I’m greeted by the familiar green of Zeke’s eyes, the toasty olive-toned skin, and the tattoo of a skeleton hand clutching a moon between its fingers on his right bicep. It’s pretty fucking definitive. “Um…” I turn back to face Khalil. “I’m pretty sure it is!”
Lightning flashes, highlighting the stark terror on Khalil and Thorin’s faces even from here. It’s the latter who yells this time. “For fuck’s sake, Aurelia! It’s—” Thunder booms and I flinch. The sky calms and the thunder is a distant roar just in time for me to hear, “Shoot him!”
Shoot him?I turn again, intending to search the shadows in the trees surrounding us for the target, but I damn near jump out of my skin when I’m met with Zeke standing right in front of me, much closer than before. A little too close with that chilling emptiness that makes him seem so cold and distant. It’s so unlike Zeke even when he wasactuallytrying to keep his distance.
This time it’s not so easy for me to dismiss. This isn’t just him upset about whatever drove him from the cabin in the middle of a storm.
This is…this is…
Heat blooms in my face as if I’d been slapped with the answer. Goose bumps pepper my skin and I shake my head in terrified denial as I back toward the slippery edge that feels far less dangerous than the taciturn man in front of me.
“Zeke?” I squeak, hoping I’m wrong.
“Mine.”
“Oh God. Oh fuck.” My vision blurs, and I slap my hands over my mouth as if my silence can save me. If Bane is awake, then…nothing can.
My breath is a hitch of terror in my throat as I stumble to put more space between us while cataloging everything I noticedbefore but ignored because I began to think the alter standing before me was an urban myth.
No, he was very much real.
There was no trace of Zeke or Seth anywhere in the harsh cut of his cheekbones, from how hard he must be clenching his teeth or the flat line of his mouth. “B-Bane?”
“Mine.”
My body trembles uncontrollably, and it has nothing to do with the wet clothes clinging to my skin while the wind batters my body. The eyes of the terrifying alter pinned impassively on me arecold. The frost is enough to root me to the ground while my fight-or-flight response plays tug-of-war with my common sense. I want to reach for the dart gun resting in its holster, but his eyes are tracking me too closely, so I ignore my twitching fingers.
Play it smart. Keep him talking.
Solid plan, Aurelia. Maybe he’llforgetto murder you.
Every step I take to put myself safely out of reach, Bane takes one equal to two of mine to keep me close. He follows without speaking, without doing anything other than hunting me. I’m the entirety of his focus as he tracks me to the water’s edge.
The sound of the river becomes louder, drowning out the sound of my heart pounding in my ears. I’m running out of ground, but Bane gives me no time to think, making me choose between drowning or…him.
“What do you want?” I decide to ask while my fingers creep toward the tranq gun. Distract him, and he won’t anticipate my next move. Khalil, Thorin, and Zeth all claimed that he was nonverbal, but he clearly has no problems terrifying the shit out of me.
“Mine.”
