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And I can’t have all these warm fucking feelings toward a Hunter because I’m just a human, I’m weak and fragile and nothing but blood and meat and bones and death waiting to happen and⁠—

Victor shouts when he comes, the sound low and guttural. His cum falls in hot, silken ropes across my tits, across my cheek. I gasp as it hits my skin, and I don’t, in that moment, feel unworthy at all.

I’m claimed. He claimed me. I don’t need to fear death, not if a Hunter wants to mark me as his.

Victor slumps back on his heels, dropping his cock. He looks at me through the sweaty tangle of his hair. I look at him. The space between us seems to widen.

An awkward silence, and we all know how I feel about those.

“Not bad,” I say.

“What part?” he counters, not missing a beat.

All of it, I think, trying to come up with something clever to say.

Not that it matters. Victor disappears into the little bathroom, the buzzing of the fluorescent light loud enough to drown out the storm. I slump back on the pillows, knowing I need to get up and clean myself off, too.

Footsteps, soft on the old carpet. Victor sits on the edge of the bed with a towel in one hand. “May I?” he asks, unnervingly polite. “I know I left a mess.”

I blush. A mess that part of me wants to leave alone, so his scent melts into my skin. What a weird thought, even if it twists my belly around in excitement. “Yeah, of course,” I say.

He gently wipes his cum away, his eyes dark and intense. I don’t move, and I’m not sure why. It’s like I’m a corpse, and he’s tending to me after my death, and why the fuck do I think that’s as hot as it is?

“There you go.” He smiles, balls the towel up. “Now, we just have to wait out the storm.”

“Yeah.”

The silence wedges between us again, like it's pushing us apart.

As it should. I can’t be with him. I know that.

So why do I want us to stay here forever?

15

VICTOR

Penelope’s watching TV, some old sitcom with a laugh track that cycles through every few minutes. She sits cross-legged on the bed, the glow from the screen illuminating her skin and making her eyes look even more luminous—especially from where I’m lurking in the corner, hidden in the shadows. It’s an old habit to shake for a Hunter like me, locked in a room with a human.

The storm’s slowed a little, but not by much. The last time I looked outside, drifts were starting to form in the parking lot, burying my car’s tires. Figures the first real snowstorm of the season had to happen when I decided on a last-minute revenge trip down in Clifwell.

He deserves to die, I tell myself, fixing the grinning face of Nicholas Wolrath in my head. The only images I could find of him online were business headshots, a grey background and a stiff smile. He doesn’t look much like Albert Wolrath at all, except for his eyes. They have the same cold glint, and I want to feel his blood between my fingers.

Penelope laughs at some joke on the show, a soft, quiet chuckle, and I press myself tighter against the wall. It’s stupid, I know. It’s not like she doesn’t realize I’m here. But after everything we did, after I marked her like that⁠—

Things feel strange.

I had to do it, though. In the moment, it was like I had no other choice. She’s human, and I desperately wanted my scent on her skin. It surprises me how urgently I needed to do it. There aren’t any other Hunters on this mountain, as far as I know, and Penelope’s not going to be at my side forever anyway. We’ll go our separate ways in Clifwell.

But when we do, I want any other Hunter she does meet to smell me on her, to know she belongs to me, that if they try to hurt her, I’m the one who will come after them. Not her sister. Not her mother, either.

Me.

It’s shocking how hotly the idea burns in my chest. How much I want to stay in the shadows, watching over her. But I can’t.

Because I have to kill Nicholas Wolrath.

And I have to do it for Mary.