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“Why? It’s a Virel shadow-cat.”

“Of course your family tattoo is a nightmare.”

A faint smile pulls at his mouth. “It’s an old Virel legend. Granddad used to tell it to us when we were kids.”

My gaze drifts back to the creature curling across his ribs. “What kind of legend?”

His fingers hook beneath my ankle, dragging me a little closer across the sheets. “The shadow-cat waits until the mouse thinks it escaped,” he purrs, his gaze locking onto mine. “Then it follows the heartbeat home.”

And just like that, the name clicks into place. Little mouse. All this time I thought it was teasing, a way to needle me for being small and easy to fluster. It isn’t. It never was. It’s the creature on his skin, patient and certain, and me the warm thing it has decided to follow home. Something cold threads through all the heat still humming in my body, because I already know another set of eyes has been tracking me through the dark. I’m no longer sure which predator found me first.

“That’s an interesting story. And a little concerning.”

A faint smile touches his mouth. “You still climbed into bed with me anyway.”

My gaze follows one of the crimson lines disappearing beneath the sharp curve of his hip before he finally reaches a hand out toward me. “You coming? You’re staring again, little mouse.”

“Your ego is already inflated enough.”

“And yet you still can’t stop looking.”

Heat climbs higher into my face, which only makes his grin sharpen. I follow him into the bathroom a second later, and he leans one shoulder against the dark stone wall beside the sink while steam still curls faintly through the room.

“You know,” he says, “most people are terrified of Virels.”

“I am terrified of you.”

Something softer moves through his expression at that. “No,” he murmurs. “You stayed.”

And the terrifying part is that leaving no longer feels safer.

Somehow, impossibly, Ciaran Virel feels safer than the shadows waiting outside his door. Despite the danger curling around him like smoke. Despite the secrets. Despite the feeling that getting closer to Ciaran Virel might genuinely ruin my life, I stayed anyway.

And standing there half-undressed beneath the moonlight with that predatory shadow-cat twisting across his skin, he looks less like a mistake and more like the beginning of one.

I’m just no longer sure whether I should be running from him or following him deeper into the dark.

23

CIARAN

Rain hammers against the transport windows while Dad and Mom argue about something again.

It’s not a real argument. Just one of those familiar disagreements that always ends the same way, with Dad acting like he’s won while somehow doing exactly what Mom wanted.

I stop listening halfway through.

Everyone knows he’d burn the world down for her if she asked.

Then Dad goes quiet, staring through the rain-streaked windows while Mom follows his gaze.

The silence is what I remember most.

Not the impact or the gunshots that followed, but the silence beforehand, stretching longer and longer until even I knew something was wrong.

"Angela."

As Mom turns toward him, following his gaze, headlights explode across the rear window behind us.