“He wore the mask of a wolf,” she said. “Grey velvet. A long muzzle. Little black glass eyes that made it difficult to tell where he was looking.”
She stopped.
The silence stretched.
“He seemed…” Her throat worked. “Charming. At first.”
Gideon’s heart went cold.
Beatrice gave a small, helpless movement of her shoulder, as though even now she hated admitting that much. “I thought I was safe.” Her voice thinned. “I thought?—”
She stopped again, lips parted, breath catching on whatever came next.
Then her eyes closed.
“And then I wasn’t.”
Gideon could not remain still a moment longer.
He moved slowly.
One step. Then another.
Giving her every chance to draw back. Every chance to refuse him. And when she did neither—when she only stood there, trembling and silent?—
He gathered her into his arms.
“Who?” he asked.
“I don’t know, Gideon. I don’t know. He could have been anyone. And, he’s still out there. I can’t have been his first. Nor was I his last. He is… He could be anyone, Gideon…”
And so it might as well be everyone. Damn his eyes, it explained… everything.
After a moment, she added, so softly he almost missed it, “There was a scent.”
“A scent?”
Beatrice seemed hardly aware she had said it. “Cloves, I think. And citrus. Too much of it.” Her mouth tightened. “I remember that.”
Then she shook her head. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”
But Gideon stored it away.
“But I can’t—” Her breaths turned shallow again. “I need to stop him.”
“Then we stop him,” he said, his hand moving over her hair. “But you do not carry this by yourself. Do you hear me?”
Nothing. Nothing had ever carved at his heart like this. And beneath it—something colder had begun to take hold.
Gideon’s jaw tightened.
“He is finished,” he said quietly.
Beatrice did not know who had hurt her. But he would find out.
He had access where she did not. Sources. Because men… They knew. Even when they pretended not to.
His hand stilled briefly in her hair.
