Page 21

How could a single look, a few cruel words, make my body burn?

For one terrifying moment, every thought disappeared, and for the first time in five years, I felt… alive.

The forest fell silent around us, seemingly holding its breath. Not a single night creature stirred in the undergrowth. Even the wind had gone still, leaving the trees motionless against the darkness.

There was only the ragged sound of my breathing and the slow, unnervingly steady rhythm of his.

All of this felt wrong. I should have been afraid.

I was afraid.

But beneath the fear was something far more dangerous: a desperate, humiliating need to feel his hands on me.

All my senses seemed to dissolve beneath the weight of his stare. I was willing to let him do whatever he wanted as long as he touched me. Even now, with his eyes fixed on me, filled with so much detestation and fury that I felt as though they could burn me to ash before he was finished with me.

And that realization horrified me.

Immediately, I shoved every sensation into the darkest corner of my mind, burying it beneath the shame and anger already burning across my face. The handcuffs bit into my wrists as I shifted, the cold metal a sharp reminder of who stood in front of me.

“I don’t want to⁠—”

“Fucking run, Sienna!”

His roar shattered the stillness and instinct took over.

I spun around and ran.

Branches whipped across my face as I plunged into the forest, snagging my clothes and scratching my cheeks. Wet leaves crunched beneath my boots, slick with the evening’s dampness, and roots twisted across the ground like traps waiting for my feet.

I ran faster and harder.

I ducked beneath a low branch and kept running, my heart pounding so violently it hurt.

The cuffs cut into my skin and hindered my movements. My lungs burned but adrenaline pushed me forward. I didn’t dare look back. I could hear him somewhere behind me: the occasional snap of a branch, the heavy rhythm of footsteps gaining and fading between the trees.

He was coming, but I had no intention of making this easy for him.

I knew these woods.

I had walked them every day for the past five years. In rain, snow, summer heat, and bitter winter cold. I knew which trails disappeared beneath the undergrowth, which trees marked the old paths, where the ground became soft and treacherous after rain.

Surely I knew this forest better than he did, and if I didn’t… I couldn’t think about that.

NINE

TYRAN

Iwas focused on one thing and one thing alone.

Sienna.

The flash of her red coat cut through the darkness like a beacon, impossible to miss against the blanket of darkness that had swallowed the forest. Pale strands of blonde hair whipped wildly around her face as she ran, catching what little moonlight managed to filter through the tangled branches overhead.

She was fast, but not fast enough. Besides, this chase had never been about whether she could outrun me. It was about how long I was willing to let her pretend she could.

The cold air bit into my cheeks, but I barely noticed it. The only thing I could feel was the steady rhythm of my boots striking the frozen ground and the growing certainty that she was running out of time.

I lengthened my stride and the distance between us shrank.