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“The House doesn’t care.” Rook stepped into the room, and the door swung shut behind him. The Freaks in the shadows went still, watching. “It wants her claimed. And it doesn’t care who does it.”

Zinnia’s breath caught. “Rook⁠—”

“Don’t.” His gaze locked onto hers. “Don’t say my name again. Not here. Not while the House is listening.”

“Why not?”

“Because if you say it again, I won’t be able to stop.” Crossing the room, he stopped in front of the table. “The House is using your voice as a command. Every time you say Rook Harker, it weakens the Hound function. And if the function breaks completely, I won’t know whether I’m hunting you because the House wants me to or because I want to.”

“And if I don’t say it?”

“Then I hunt you. I catch you. And I claim you the way the House intended.” His hand moved to the muzzle, and he pulled it off slowly. “But if you say it again, the House loses control. And so do I.”

Zinnia stared at him, her chest rising and falling. “What happens if you lose control?”

“I don’t know. But we’re about to find out.”

The air between them crackled.

I watched, fascinated, as Zinnia’s defiance shifted into something darker. Something that recognized the danger and couldn’t decide whether to run from it or lean into it.

“Rook Harker,” she said.

The House screamed.

The walls cracked. The shelves collapsed. The filing cabinets burst open, spilling contracts and photographs across the floor. The Mouth-Bearer’s second mouth opened wide and began speaking in a dozen different voices at once, all of them saying variations of “I agree” and “I want this” and “don’t stop.”

Rook lunged forward, his hands closing around Zinnia’s throat, his body pinning her against the table.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said.

“I know.” Her hands fisted in his shirt, pulling him closer even as her breath came in short, panicked gasps. “I know.”

Rook’s grip tightened. Not enough to cut off her air completely, but enough to make her gasp, enough to make her body arch against his. His other hand moved to her thigh, spreading her legs wider, his fingers digging into her skin hard enough to bruise.

The Seamstress tried again, her thread snaking across the table toward Zinnia’s wrist.

I grabbed the thread and yanked it back, snapping it. The Seamstress shrieked and vanished into the shadows.

“Khaos,” Rook said without looking at me. “Are you going to help, or are you going to watch?”

“Both.” Circling the table, I stopped behind Zinnia and ran my hands down her sides. “But if we’re doing this, the House is going to record every second of it. So let’s make sure it can’t tell whether she’s begging us to stop or begging us to keep going.”

Zinnia’s breath hitched. Her body tensed under my hands, and her pulse raced beneath her skin.

The Grinners were gathering in the shadows now, three of them, their painted smiles all turned toward us. They were waiting to record whatever happened next, waiting to twist it into something the House could use.

My hands moved lower, finding the wetness between her thighs. She was already soaked, her body responding to the danger and the threat and the promise of being overwhelmed. I slid two fingers inside her, and she moaned, her hips rising involuntarily to take me deeper.

Rook’s grip on her throat tightened. “Say my name again.”

“Rook,” she gasped.

“Again.”

“Rook Harker.”

His control snapped.