My breath leaves me slowly.I should feel better, but I don’t.I feel like I am standing at the mouth of another dark room, waiting to see whether the monster inside will offer me teeth or truth.
Knox steps back, giving me space I didn’t ask for but need anyway.Across the bar, the silver collar disappears down the stairs with the witches.It’s not on me.Not yet.Not ever, if I have anything to say about it.
But something else waits around my throat now.An unknown something I can almost feel when Knox looks at me.And tonight, whether he is ready or not, I am going to make him name it.
Chapter Eight
The Truth Behind the Fury
Knox
Tonight.Briana gives me until tonight.
Then she walks away from me with her spine straight, her throat bare, and fear tucked so tightly beneath her skin I can taste it from across the room.
No more hiding.
The words sit in my chest like a blade.
I told her I would tell her the truth, and I meant it.I still mean it.But meaning something and surviving it aren’t the same.I have faced vampires, demons, shifters twice my size, and creatures with mouths where eyes should be.I have killed monsters in the cage beneath The Gin Room and walked away with blood on my hands and nothing in my chest.
None of that scares me the way Briana does.Not because she is weak.Because she is not.
Not because she is broken.Because she keeps standing with all the broken pieces in her hands, daring the world to tell her they make her less.
I don’t know how to stand before that kind of woman and confess that fate put my name somewhere near hers without sounding like another monster making a claim.
The beast in me doesn’t care about sounding like anything.He has one truth.
Mate.
Mine.
Ours.
I shove him back so hard my skull aches.She is not mine.Not until she chooses.Maybe not even then, not in the way he means it.
