“That's the thing. Idotrust you. Even when you’re driving me crazy. Even when every instinct is screaming at me to get as far away from you as I can."
“Every instinct, huh?” Lifting a hand to my face, he slid the pad of his thumb across my lower lip, sending sparks of heat cascading across my skin. “At least now I know I'm not the only one whose advice you completely ignore."
He flashed that crooked grin, but it couldn’t hide the sadness in his eyes. The regret. The secrets.
He lowered his hand from my face, and I knew in that moment he wouldn’t kiss me tonight. Not now. Maybe not ever again.
The thought nearly gutted me.
I leaned my head on his shoulder and sighed. “Ronan, I…”
I’m in love with you. Can’t you see that? Can’t youfeelit?
“Get some sleep, Gray.” He kissed the top of my head, then rose from the bed. “If you need me, I’m right out on the couch.”
I need you. Ialwaysneed you.
So many thoughts. So many unsaid words. All I had to do was open my mouth, give them a voice, set them free. I could say all the right things, all the things that would make him stay, make him get back in this bed with me, make him kiss me so hard and deep I’d never eat or drink again without remembering the taste of his hot, hungry mouth.
I needed to say the words that would finally make him understand what he meant to me whether he was ready to hear them or not.
But the space around me had turned cold, and by the time I found the courage to open my eyes, Ronan was gone.
Thirty-Five
Gray
I wake up in my meadow.
Sophie’s there in the distance again, the same place where I last saw her, only this time she’s naked. Her skin is marred with runes—not just across her chest, like in the evidence photos, but all over her body. Each one pulses with fiery red light.
"Sophie?" I get to my feet and run toward her, but the closer I get, the further away she feels. I continue to chase her, running until my body burns with exhaustion.
But the trees are closing in. I just can’t catch her.
“Tell me what to do!" I scream. “Tell me who did this to you!”
Sophie finally stops running and turns to face me, a frown marring her face. “I think you already know,Rayanne.”
“What? What do I know? I can't—”
A branch snaps in the black forest around the clearing, startling us both.
“You should go,” Sophie says. “It’s not safe for you here.”
I try to reach for her hands, but she’s already out of bounds, vanishing into the mist beyond.
I hear the snap again, closer this time, and whirl around to face my assailant. At first, I see nothing but mist and shadow, but eventually a dark shape emerges.
A great canine beast with glowing red eyes looms before me.
His fur is coal-black, bloody and matted in parts, torn away in others. Cracked yellow ribs poke through a festering wound on one side of his body, but if he’s in pain, he doesn’t show it. Those glowing, wide-set eyes burn like smoldering embers in an otherwise empty skull.
Beneath an elongated snout, the creature opens his mouth, revealing two rows of razor-sharp teeth, dripping with black blood and rotten flesh. The sound that erupts from that black cave is beyond primal, as if it were tortured out of him by the devil himself. Every hair on my arms stands on end.
Something else crunches in the forest behind me, and the massive creature before me springs to its hind legs and lunges, two massive paws crashing into my chest. The force knocks me to the ground, and the beast pins me with monstrous paws, his jagged claws piercing my flesh.
Desperate for a rock or a stick, I claw at the ground around me, but there’s only soft dirt and dead flower petals, the scent of rotting lavender filling my nostrils.
