Page 49
Still. . .unable to help myself. . .I lowered my nose to the curve of her neck and deeply inhaled.
FUCK.
Her heartbeats picked up as she turned her face toward me and widened her eyes.
I pushed my thought into her mind. “How are you, little witch?”
She blinked. “We’re right next to each other. . .unfortunately. . .you can talk to me normally.”
I smirked. “Can I now?”
“Yes.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Besides annoyed that I was kidnapped?”
“Yes.” I did my best not to laugh. “Besides that.”
She frowned and scanned the car. “This isn’t too bad for a kidnapping. There could be worse situations.”
“And how does your body feel?”
Her cursed black heart vibrated along her flesh.
Clearly, shocked she looked down at her chest. “What are you doing to my curse?”
“That is not me.” I studied the black heart vibrating above her breasts. “That is our bond pushing against it.”
Her gaze snapped back to mine. “Our bond can do that?”
“It already is.” I placed two fingers beneath her chin and gently tipped her face upward, giving myself a clearer view of the mark.
The black heart had changed since I first saw it. Before, the curse had rested against her skin like spilled ink—dark, flat, and silent. Now, it pulsed with a rhythm that fought against the beating of her heart. Each time Gabby’s heart sent blood rushing through her body, the mark contracted as if trying to choke the life flowing beneath it.
Then something moved inside the darkness.
I narrowed my eyes.
Deep within the curse, thousands of thin red strands twisted together like worms buried beneath black soil. They curled around one another, knotting and unknotting, forming the shadow of an infant before breaking apart again.
My hands heated. “Who in your family placed this curse upon your bloodline?”
Gabby stiffened. “Big Mae—my great-great-great-grandmother. She was the first woman in our bloodline born free. Everyone before her had been born in chains.”
Chains. . .
I let the word sit inside my chest, and every form beneath my skin went very, very still.
I had seen chains before.
I had watched Portuguese ships pull into the harbors of Nagasaki with human cargo below their decks and had understood then—centuries before the world would speak the word aloud—what a country looked like when it decided that other people were livestock.
I had stood on foreign shores and smelled the ships coming in before they made landfall. I had known what was inside them.
And I had done nothing because they were not mine.
The beast warrior beneath my jaw let out a low, murderous vibration.
