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Then he’s running.

I drop my shopping bag and take off.

Before I get to the corner, he’s on my heels, and I scream as he barrels into me, knocking me to the ground. He rolls me over and pins my shoulders to the frozen pavement.

I make myself look. Wild black eyes and sharp fangs. A filthy hand clamps over my mouth, and he leans down, tucking his nose against my throat, breathing in deep.

“You smell of him.” He grimaces like I’m spoiled meat. “And…something else.” His voice is hard, and his face breaks into a delighted grin.

He’s distracted, too busy smelling me to hold me properly. Six Saturdays at the Y, I know how to fend off a handsy man. He lets out a strangled yelp when my knee meets his groin. I roll away when he clutches his most sensitive parts.

The asphalt bites into my knees, tearing holes in my tights, and I slip on the icy gutter as I struggle to get up. I slap my coat pockets for my phone. Wrong one. Both wrong.

Too fast, he recovers and stalks toward me. I’m fenced in at the side of the bakery, sixty feet from Nick’s front door, back pressed to the brick wall. This is it. I never thought I’d go out to a creature from the Big Book of Cryptids.

He inches closer until he’s boxing me in. He’s wearing a University of Alaska Fairbanks hoodie. Since when do monsters dress like college kids? I shove at him with everything I have, pound on his chest, but he’s strong and built like a sock stuffed full of billiard balls. I screw my eyes shut and scream again until my throat is raw, bracing.

Then the weight is…gone.

Where his cold, heavyset body crowded me against the wall, there’s nothing but frigid air. I open them, expecting to find him there, drooling over me, but…

Nick.

Nick’s here.

He has the guy by the neck, but he twists out of Nick’s grip and the two of them circle each other, trading places like they’re in a flip book. I can barely keep up.

“Back off. She’s mine,” the guy says.

Nick doesn’t respond.

My attacker swings, and Nick catches the blow like it’s nothing, like he’s made of the same cold stone I felt under my lips at the cabin.

The guy steps back to try again.

Nick stalks forward, fists clenched, under the streetlight.

I see his face.

My thudding heart slows and stops.

His pale gray eyes are black as night, and his lips are pulled back, teeth bared like a rabid animal. Razor-sharp fangs poke through at the corners of his mouth.

Like the thing that attacked me.

Nick is a monster.

It all comes together in a rush, and I swallow a sob. Cold skin, doesn’t eat, doesn’t breathe, stands outside all night in below-freezing weather. Too fast, too strong. The sting below my ear in Hollings.

The two shapes blink across the alley, the only sound the dull thud of bodies hitting concrete. The guy rams Nick square in the chest, and they both go flying into a stack of timber crates filled with glass bottles. They splinter under the force, glass smashing in a racket, sending the rest skittering over the road.

This guy is bigger than Nick, bulkier, and he struggles to push him off. The guy opens his jaws, baring his sharp teeth, and I know he’s going to kill Nick.

I grab a bottle from the ground.

Chapter 31

Nick