Page 8 of Wretched Thorns

I shook my head once, hard, trying to get them off. The silver in the rope bit and burned when I moved. A few petals slid down to the bedding. The rest stayed where he had put them.

And I heard the lock turning in the door.

***

This time I was ready.

Not ready to fight. Not ready to escape. But ready for the fear, at least. Ready for the way my heart would slam against my ribs, for the cold sweat that would break across my skin. Ready for Marcus.

The door swung open. Light spilled in.

He looked even better than before. Younger, somehow. More vital. Like whatever he’d taken from me had filled something that had been empty in him.

I hated him with a purity that surprised me. Not the complicated, tangled hatred of our relationship, woven through with guilt, self-doubt and memories of the man I’d thought he was. This was simple. Clean. He had taken something from me. He was going to take more.

And I was going to find a way to stop him.

“You’re awake.” He smiled, stepping inside. The door closed behind him. “Good. We have so much to discuss.”

I didn’t answer. I was watching the shadows in the corners of the room, the way they seemed to lean toward me even as Marcus approached. The way they felt like a held breath, waiting for permission.

Not yet, I thought at them. Not yet. But soon.

Marcus sat on the edge of the bed, close enough that I could smell that wrong sweetness beneath his cologne.

He brushed a few of the petals off my shoulder with the back of his hand. Deliberate. The way a man clears a space on his own table for the work he is about to do.

“You look beautiful with my roses on you,” he said, almost pleased. “Good girl.”

His gray-green eyes studied my face with an intensity that made my skin crawl.

“You’re a little too…” he drawled, “Something’s changed.”

I stayed silent. The taste of chicory coffee lingered on my tongue, and I held onto it like a lifeline. A warm kitchen. A lady with… A pain shot through my head, like being stabbed in the temple with an ice pick. The shadows came closer. The feel of worn wood. The ice pick stabbed at my temples again, but the shadows rushed in and the pain receded. The smell of herbs. Real. Remember.

“No matter.” Marcus reached for my face. “We have plenty of time to figure out what to do about it. And in the meantime...”

His fingers touched my cheek.

His thumb dragged once along my lower lip and stayed there. He looked at my mouth the way a man looks at a meal before he picks up the fork.

Everything in me went cold. Here it was again, the thing I could not stop, in the place I could not leave. My body went rabbit-still the way it always had with him, hoping that if I was quiet enough and good enough the hurting would be over faster. I hated that stillness more than I hated him. It was the last thing I owned that he had not taken, and even it was on his side.

The pulling started.

But this time, I didn’t just endure it. This time, I reached for the shadows.

They answered.

Chapter three

Jasper

Alive.

Jasper pressed at the bond and got it back. The dark brindle frequency that had been Callum for as far back as Jasper could remember. The connection he shared with his brother from the womb, was now buried under something cold and unnatural.

But there.