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Make her beg.

Hunting Claire was easy. She hid in the old storage room behind a stack of rotting crates, her breathing too loud, her fear too sharp. Finding her took less than twenty minutes. Catching her took less than five.

She fought. Clawed at my arms. Tried to run. But I was stronger, faster, and the House had designed the room with only one exit. I pinned her against the wall, held the knife to her throat, and waited for her to stop struggling.

“Please,” she gasped. “Please don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t hurt me.”

“I’m not going to hurt you.” I lowered the knife and stepped back just enough to let her breathe. “I’m going to give you a choice.”

“What choice?”

“You can beg me to let you go, and I’ll take you to see your husband right now. No additional debt. No more performances. You see him, you talk to him, and then you leave.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What’s the catch?”

“The catch is that if you beg, you’re admitting you don’t actually want to save him. You’re admitting you’d rather run than fight. And the House will make sure he knows that.”

“That’s not fair.”

“The House doesn’t do fair.” I sheathed the knife and crossed my arms. “So what’s it going to be? Are you going to beg, or are you going to finish the hunt?”

Claire stared at me, her chest heaving, her hands clenched into fists. “What happens if I finish the hunt?”

“You prove you’re serious. You prove you’ll do whatever it takes. And the House gives you a real contract. One that might actually get him out.”

“Might?”

“Nothing’s guaranteed.”

“Fuck you.”

“That’s the spirit.” I stepped aside and gestured toward the open corridor. “You’ve got forty minutes left. Run.”

She ran.

And I followed.

The hunt lasted another thirty minutes. She tried hiding in the furnace room, the old holding cells, the flooded trench beneath the foundation. Each time I found her. Each time I gave her the same choice. Each time she refused to beg.

By the time I cornered her in the archives, she was bleeding from a dozen cuts, her slip torn and filthy, her feet raw from running barefoot on stone. But her eyes were still defiant, still burning with the same desperate determination that had brought her through the front door.

“Last chance,” I said.

She told me to fuck off.

“You want him that badly?”

She did.

I pulled her against me and kissed her hard, my hand fisting in her hair. She kissed back with the kind of desperation that came from having no other options left, her fingers clawing at my shirt, her body pressing into mine like she could force the House to honor a bargain it had never intended to keep.

The audience pressed closer to the glass, their breath fogging the windows, their hands moving beneath their clothes. The House fed on their hunger, their anticipation, the way they leaned forward to see how far she would go.

Claire broke the kiss and shoved me back against the wall. “Is this what you want?” Her voice was raw, shaking. “You want me to prove I’ll do anything?”