Page 53 of Hunted

He studies me with the quiet certainty of complete ownership. ‘Your time is up, little one,’ he says, and there’s no cruelty in his voice.

Just fact. Stark and soul-rending.

Which is worse.

In the dream, the same collision tears through me. Fear sharpened by fury, humiliation tangled with something dangerous that feels disturbingly like lust. Heightened. Treacherous. The kind that makes my thighs clench even knowing this bloodsucker can probably already smell the betrayal.

He steps into the room and the air changes.

‘You belong to me,’ he says quietly.

The words should feel like shackles.

Tonight, they feel like confirmation of something I’ve kept locked at the back of my mind.

Absolutely fucking not.

I retreat until the bed presses against the backs of my knees, but the distance between us keeps collapsing in ways that have nothing to do with space.

His hand lifts, hovering above my throat without touching. Close enough that heat radiates from his skin.

Again, he should be cold.

He isn’t.

His warmth connects straight to my chest, then unfurls through my whole body, thickening into a pulse, a tightening thread that snags me, invisible and undeniable.

The room shifts. The walls stretch.

The bed dissolves and suddenly we’re on the rooftop again, the city sprawling beneath us in glittering lines, wind sharp against my skin and his hand still poised near my throat.

‘You run,’ he breathes into my ear, hot against cold, almost contemplative, ‘but you do not sever.’

‘I severed everything,’ I reply, but even in the dream I hear the fragility of it. ‘You will never find me.’

He steps closer, and the skyline tilts as if the world itself is adjusting to him.

‘You severed your name,’ he corrects. ‘Not your fate.’

The pulse between us burns brighter.

My gaze drops to his mouth, his jaw, his throat. Then lower, to a resonant echo coming from beneath his black shirt.

His chest?

I know I’m dreaming. I know I can’t trust my eyes.

Still, I can’t look away as something ancient presses its thumb into the space between my ribs.

‘Lyra.’

The snap of my name yanks my gaze up. I want to tell him not to call me that, but even in my dream I have the sense to keep my fucking mouth shut.

‘You cannot outrun what was written,’ he says.

The rooftop shifts again.

The city turns vertical. Gravity abandons its rules, and I fall.