I stare unblinking, struggling to understand why he’s here, what he’s doing, why he’s looking at me like that.
Anassa rises within the cell, padding towards the enormous shifting shadow that is Cratos. The instant she’s near him, her entire demeanor changes.
Her muscles relax. Her flanks shiver. She holds her head lower than I’ve ever seen and approaches the bars. Anassa presses her nose to the metal and Cratos steps forward to touch his nose to hers, his sides expanding as he takes a deep breath.
A second later, something in our bond shifts dramatically.
She has suddenly drawn aside curtains that I didn’t even know existed, blinding me with light and heat andsatiation. A small choking sound clicks in my throat, and I clutch my chest as my blood is set on fire.
My vision blurs at the first impact of her emotion, unshielded for the first time since we bonded.
Her true feelings about Cratos are earth shattering. The intensity of Anassa’s desire for her mate crushes the air from my lungs and sends slow, addictive heat through every inch of me. Her longing crackles across the channel of energy between us and seeps into my blood.
It pulses through me with each rapid heartbeat and drowns out common sense and everything I thought I knew.
My lips tingle. My fingers itch. My muscles want to move, to take, togo.
To him, I realize.
Stark’s dark eyes watch me steadily, and a shiver passes over my spine. I clench my jaw tightly as hyperawareness heightens my senses. I swear I can hear his heartbeat from clear across the cell. Feel his breath in my own chest. Sense the heat of his skin.
Logically, I know this is Anassa. Her bond with Cratos is overtaking my own consciousness.
But that knowledge doesn’t dampen the intensity or help me resist the pull.
It’s like looking at him with new, keener eyes. As Stark approaches the cell bars, familiar things about him suddenly seem different—the predatory grace of his movement, the strength in his hands as he grips the bars, the way his kill tattoos disappear beneath his collar as his head tilts.
Fuck, his eyelashes are long.
I want him to turn his head so that I can see that hidden scar beneath his jaw again.
The sheer insanity of that thought impacts me with force. I take a scraping step back and gather my energy to block Anassa’s emotion. But I stop short.
I don’t want to cut her out again. It feels wrong.
So I settle a thin filter in place in my head, just enough to come to my senses and stop gazing at this brutal, infuriating, ruinous man as if I’m on the verge of ripping his pants off and going to town.
Once the initial rush of it passes, all that’s left is shock and fury.
“You,” I growl, hands in fists.
All this time, it wasStark.
That day on the mountain, it was him. The day he glared right at me in a sea of Rawbonds, it was him. When he sunk a needle into my neck, it was him. When he threatened my life. When he made it his life’s mission to kill me in training. When he jabbed me in my injured torso and asked Anassa if she wanted to heal me…
They were talking. He couldhearher.
When I found that book and they both refused to tell me about it—they weretalking. It felt like they were colluding, because theywere.
Fuck, how did I miss this?
I step closer, slamming my hand against the bars. “Did you know the entire time?” I keep my voice pitched low, aware that the guards may have returned outside, but my tone is poisonous.
He doesn’t even slightly flinch. “Of course.”
And he has no iota of remorse for keeping it from me, either. It’s clear as day, right on his face. He doesn’t give a shit. And I’m furious at him, but beyond that, a hundred questions fill my mind.
Why didn’t he tell me? Why has he made my life hell? How did he hide this so well?
