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“You’re not going to stop trying to get out of that net, are you?” He sighed, as if disappointed in her. “So stubborn.”
She let out a fuck off screech. He jumped slightly. Which would have delighted both her and her demon if they weren’t too worried for Teague to find any amusement in anything right now.
Holt’s nostrils flared. “There is no sense in being angry with me,” he snapped, defensive. “You are at fault for the position you’re in.”
Say what?
“It would never have come to this if we had only formed the bond when we first found each other. But you refused. You held back from me—your own anchor—instead of trusting me from the outset like you should have,” he reprimanded, as if he hadn’t done things that would justify her failure to do so.
God, he was such an ass.
Feeling another testing shove against the wall in her mind, Larkin would have hissed if she could have.
Holt’s brows knitted. “The barrier should have cracked by now.” He hummed. “You have more mental strength than most people I know. But I don’t see why you’d bother putting up such a resistance. You can’t possibly sustain it.”
Yeah? Watch me, asshole.
There was another give in the net. Not as if a seam had popped, but as if a few threads had torn. Ha. Soon enough, it would split. It had to.
“If you think I’m wrong, you’re lying to yourself. We will form the bond, Larkin. There’s no avoiding it. There never was. If you had just made your peace with that long ago, things would be so different now. I wouldn’t be at risk of turning rogue. You wouldn’t have been angry and hurt all these years. In fact, you would be firmly settled in my lair, and we might even be ruling it together.”
She stopped chewing, shocked. Together?
“You once accused me of only pretending to care for you, but it wasn’t true. My feelings for you were genuine. I envisioned us being co-Primes of my lair.” His mouth set into a bitter twist. “But that would never happen now, would it? Too much has passed that tainted what could have been.”
There would never have been anything romantic between them, even if he’d been the world’s best anchor. She simply didn’t view him in that light.
His eyes turned glacial. “And then there’s fucking Sullivan.”
Not whatsoever liking his scathing tone, she took a moment to shoot Holt hate eyes before going back to chewing the net.
“I saw how you look at him. He means something to you. Matters enough that I think you would actually go as far as to leave your lair—something you refused to do for me—to be with him.”
Honestly . . . she thought there was little that she wouldn’t do for her hellhorse.
A dark smirk curled Holt’s lips. “Unlucky for you, that won’t happen. You’ll never see him again.”
God, it would really be great if he would stop talking about Teague, because it was already difficult for her to fully concentrate on the seriousness of her personal situation when she was inwardly obsessing over the hellhorse’s safety.
Even as she told herself that Teague would be fine, fear for him curdled in her stomach all the same.
By now, he would have noticed that she hadn’t showed yet. He would be wondering why she hadn’t yet arrived. She hoped he wouldn’t worry that something was wrong. He didn’t need to be distracted right now. He needed to—
Her heart jumped as more threads in the net tore. Yes. It was only a matter of time, hopefully mere minutes, before the material would split.
Awesome. Except for one thing. The split might be audible.
If Holt heard it tear, he’d move to restrain her. That meant she’d need to be prepared to act fast. She’d need to move so swiftly that he’d be unable to get a hold on her or blast her with hellfire.
She didn’t think he would kill her. He needed her. Or, more to the point, he needed the anchor bond to ensure that he didn’t turn rogue.
But that didn’t require her to be unharmed.
Given that he was quite clearly pissed at her for a whole multitude of reasons and blamed her for his current near-rogue state, she suspected he’d have little problem causing her pain. Especially if he and his demon were raging over her repeated rejection.
Holt had many aggressive abilities. And she knew what his favorite method of disabling and torturing people happened to be. He liked to utilize his power to generate enough heat in his hands that by merely touching a person he could liquify their bones.
Lovely, right?
It meant there’d sadly be no slow death for him. She didn’t have the luxury of granting herself or her demon that indulgence. She’d need to kill him quickly before his sentinels interfered.
