The words shouldn’t have hit as hard as they did, but something in the way he said them, soft and unguarded, broke through the ache in my chest.
I exhaled, finally letting the tension bleed from my shoulders. “You make it sound as if I needed to ask for your permission.”
He smiled, that familiar glint of mischief softening the edges. “Of course not,” he murmured. “You never ask, kitten, you just claim.”
He nodded in the direction of the camp. “You first. If I keep looking at you, sweetie, I’ll start to think this was a dream.”
I smiled as I took his hand, tugging him towards the faint glow of the campfire. “Then stay close. I’ll make sureyou don’t wake up.”
CHAPTER
18
Morning found us before we were ready for it.
Malakai’s arm was locked around my waist, his hand splayed low on my stomach, fingers curved like he owned every inch of me. His breath ghosted along my neck, slow, controlled, and far too calm for someone who had spent half the night pretending he didn’t want me.
The fog curled thick around us, cold enough to bite through my clothes… except for where he held me. There, I was burning.
“You kept making those little sounds,” he murmured against my skin, voice still rough from sleep. “Did you dream of what you wanted from me last night?”
Heat surged straight to my core. I elbowed him gently, which did exactly nothing. He only tightened his hold, pulling me back flush against him.
“You’re intolerable,” I muttered.
“I am merciful,” he countered, lips brushing my shoulder like a threat. “You were seconds from begging.”
He said it like it was a secret victory. Like heenjoyedthe power of denial.
I turned to face him, ready to fire back something sharp, but his crimson eyes caught mine, molten and starving beneath all that practiced restraint. My heart forgot its rhythm.
He smirked, satisfied with the chaos he had stirred inside me. “I eagerly await the moment your patience crumbles, kitten,” he purred.
I blinked as we lay beneath a canopy of skeletal branches, their twisted silhouettes lost in a wall of pale fog. The forest hadn’t changed during our travel through it, but that was precisely what put my nerves on edge; the same dead trunks, same chalk grey sand swallowing our footprints before we even finished taking the next step. It was like the ground refused to remember we were ever here. We should have cleared this forest yesterday.
Malakai finally let me go reluctantly, and I sat up, trying not to miss his heat like an idiot.
Lionel was already awake, scanning the identical dead trunks with a frown. “This makes no sense. We should’ve reached the end of the forest a long time ago, yet we don’t even appear to be close to the edge.”
Eve rose close by, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “Unless distance doesn’t mean the same thing here.”
Ashley yawned as she got to her feet, steadying herself when Nate instinctively reached for her arm. She pretended not to need the support, but didn’t pull away from him either.
The rest of the unit began stirring at the sound of voices.
“We should pack up and get moving,” I ordered.
The deeper we walked, the less the world made sense.
The fog never eased up around the ground, but a few times we were able to spot the sky above. Every direction looked the same, dead trees like rotting ribs, grey sand swallowing our tracks. It felt like each step took us nowhere.
No birds. No wind. Only whispers.
They slipped between the trees, soft voices shaped like secrets none of us wanted to hear again.
Ashley paused first, suddenly rigid. “It’s… saying my name,” she whispered, voice breaking. “It sounds likeher.”
Her twin, Mauria, who she lost and missed more than life itself.
