Chapter 2: Thorns in the Dark

The bass from Club Eclipse still thrummed in my ears like a guilty pulse when I finally slipped out of the mansion again that same night. I'd barely made it through the kitchen door at dawn, body still humming from the alley, before the itch under my skin drove me back out. My hunter's mark burned low and sticky now, nothing like the clean fire of a hunt, and my thighs kept pressing together every time I remembered his mouth on my neck.

I crouched on the fire escape two stories up, rain dripping off my hood, naming the lockpick in my pocket after my great-aunt Ingrid just to keep my hands from shaking. The brass button from his coat pressed against my sternum under my shirt, warm as a fresh brand. Every shift of it sent that phantom flutter through my belly again, faint but insistent, like something I had no right to feel.

This was supposed to be the end of it. One clean stake. Restore the oath. Erase the memory of how I'd come apart against that wall like I'd never hated him at all. Simple.

Except nothing about Henrik Forsythe had been simple since he'd pinned me in that alley and my blood oath had cracked like old bone.

I slipped Ingrid into the lock on the side door. It gave with a soft click that sounded louder than the music. The stairwell smelled of damp concrete and old blood, sharp enough to make my stomach roll. I descended anyway, stake in one hand and the taste of self-loathing thick on my tongue.

The corridor opened into a room that looked like a Victorian library had decided to throw a goth rave. Candles flickered in iron sconces. Shelves groaned under leather-bound volumes and antique maps pinned to the walls. And there, in the center, stood Henrik.

He didn't turn right away. Just kept tracing a route on one of those maps with one long finger, golden-brown skin catching the light. His coat was missing the button I'd stolen. The small absence felt too intimate, like I'd already marked him back.

"Little huntress," he said without looking up, that faint Swedish lilt thickening. "You took your time. I was beginning to think you'd actually listen to your own advice about staying away."

My grip tightened on the stake until the wood creaked. "Don't flatter yourself. I'm here to finish what my family started four centuries ago."

He finally faced me. Those dark eyes pinned me in place, seeing too much. The corner of his mouth twitched. "And yet your heart is racing for reasons that have nothing to do with righteous fury. I can hear it from here."

Bastard. I crossed the room in three strides, stake raised. He caught my wrist with that same precise strength from the alley, not hurting but not yielding either. We stood like that, breathing each other's air, candlelight painting shadows across his sharp features.

"Tell me about my brother," I demanded. My voice came out rougher than I wanted. "The truth this time. Or I'm two seconds from testing whether that heart of yours still beats after I shove this through it."

Something flickered across his face. Regret, maybe. He released my wrist but didn't step back. Instead he reached up and brushed a rain-damp curl from my forehead with a gentleness that made me hold my breath until my lungs burned.

"Your brother came to me three nights before he disappeared," he said quietly. "Not to kill. To talk. He had questions about the oath. About what our families had hidden from each other for generations."

I laughed, but it scraped my throat raw. "Nice try. The Lindstroms don't bargain with monsters."

"No?" His hand dropped to my shoulder, thumb pressing lightly against my collarbone where my pulse jumped like a trapped thing. "Then why does your mark sing when I touch you instead of screaming for my blood?"

Heat flooded my face. I wanted to deny it. Wanted to drive the stake home and pretend the slickness between my legs was just rain. Instead I shoved him backward until his thighs hit the heavy oak table. Maps scattered. A candle wobbled but didn't fall.

"Don't say my name like that," I hissed. But I was already crowding into his space, my free hand fisting in his shirt. The fabric smelled like him—pine and old leather and that indefinable pull that made my mouth water.

His eyes darkened. "Like what? Like you're already mine?" One large hand settled at the small of my back, possessive as hell, and pulled me flush against him. He was hard already. The thick line of his cock pressed against my stomach and my body answered with a rush of heat I couldn't blame on hate.

I kissed him to shut him up. Or maybe to punish us both. It was all teeth and months of inherited rage pouring out between our mouths. He groaned into it, the sound vibrating down my spine, and suddenly we were moving.

He lifted me onto the table like I weighed nothing. My legs wrapped around his hips on instinct, ankles locking at his lower back. The stake clattered to the floor. Neither of us reached for it.

"This doesn't change anything," I gasped between kisses, even as my hands worked at his belt with humiliating speed. "I still hate you."

"Good." His voice had dropped to that velvet rasp that made my nipples tighten. "Hate me while you ride my cock, little huntress. Hate me while I drink from that sweet thigh and you come so hard you forget your own name."

The words should have enraged me. Instead they made me whimper. I yanked his pants open and wrapped my hand around him. Hot. Velvet over steel. His hips jerked into my grip and the raw want on his face made my hunter's mark flare with something dark and hungry.

He shoved my jeans down just enough. The cool air hit my soaked center and I shivered. Then his fingers were there, sliding through my folds with devastating accuracy, finding my clit like he'd studied it for centuries.

"So wet already," he murmured against my mouth. "For the monster who ruined your perfect little life."

"Shut up." I bit his lower lip hard enough to draw blood. The metallic taste exploded across my tongue and my mark flared hotter instead of screaming. I guided him to my entrance and sank down in one desperate motion.

The stretch burned in the best way. We both groaned, foreheads pressed together. For one suspended moment we just stayed like that—connected, trembling, the weight of everything unsaid pressing down harder than his body ever could.

Then he moved. A slow, deep roll of his hips that dragged against every sensitive spot inside me. I threw my head back, offering my throat without thinking. His fangs grazed the skin there but didn't break it. Not yet.

"Look at me," he commanded softly. I did. Those eyes held centuries of loneliness and a hunger that had nothing to do with blood. It terrified me more than any kill ever had.

I started riding him then, frantic and messy, using his shoulders for leverage. The table creaked beneath us. Maps crumpled under my knees. Every downward thrust pulled a broken sound from my throat that I'd deny later. His hands gripped my ass, guiding me, spreading me wider for each plunge.

I came with a sob, clenching around him so hard my vision whited out. He followed with a guttural sound, hips stuttering as he spilled deep inside me. The feel of it—hot, claiming—sent another helpless aftershock through me before I could stop it.

Before I could catch my breath or rebuild my walls, he dropped to his knees between my spread thighs. The first swipe of his tongue through my oversensitive folds made me jolt. Then his mouth sealed over my clit and two fingers pushed back into me, curling just right.

"Again," he growled against my flesh. "Give me another. I need to taste how much you hate me while you fall apart."

I threaded my fingers through his short hair and held on as he devoured me. His fangs scraped delicately against my inner thigh right before he sank them in. The pull of his mouth matched the rhythm of his fingers and I shattered again, thighs shaking around his head as I cried out his name like both curse and prayer.

When the aftershocks finally faded I slid off the table on unsteady legs, yanking my jeans back up with hands that wouldn't stop trembling. The silence stretched between us, thick and uncomfortable. No grand declarations. No sudden epiphanies. Just the wet sound of my breathing and the distant thump of music from upstairs.

He watched me dress in the flickering light. That unreadable expression was back, the one that made me want to both punch him and crawl back into his lap. My chest felt too tight. I told myself it was just the aftereffects of coming so hard I saw stars.

"There's more," he said finally, voice rough. He reached for one of the scattered maps and smoothed it out on the table.

I didn't want to look. Looking meant admitting this wasn't over. That I wasn't walking out of here and never coming back. But my feet carried me closer anyway.

The parchment was old, edges crumbling. Lines of migration and territory marked in faded ink. Overlaid in fresher strokes were symbols I recognized. Lindstrom crests. Forsythe wolves. Intertwined in ways that made my stomach drop.

"Hidden alliances," he said quietly. "Not all your family wanted endless war. Some saw the benefit of coexistence. Your brother died trying to expose it. Not by my hand."

My fingers traced one particular mark near Ravenwood Bay. A date. The year my brother vanished. The year my father started drinking harder and my mother stopped smiling.

"Why are you showing me this?" My voice came out small. I hated it.

He stepped behind me, not touching but close enough that I felt his warmth. "Because if we're going to burn everything down, you deserve to know what you're holding the match to."

I turned in the circle of his almost-embrace. Our eyes locked and for once I didn't see the monster. I saw a man who'd carried the guilt of centuries and somehow still chose not to kill the hunter sent to end him. It was worse than hate. This felt like the start of something that would destroy us both.

"This was supposed to get it out of our systems," I whispered. The lie tasted like ash on my tongue.

His hand came up to cup my jaw, thumb stroking my lower lip. "Was it?" The deadpan humor flickered briefly in his eyes. "Because I find myself wanting to map every inch of you next. With my mouth. Slowly."

Heat flared low in my belly again. Traitorous, insatiable thing. I should have walked away. Instead I pulled him down into another bruising kiss, tasting my own blood on his tongue.

We stumbled toward a velvet chaise in the corner. This time it was slower. More dangerous. His mouth traced my body like one of his precious charts, lingering on every scar from old hunts, every place my mark had burned over the years. When he finally slid into me again I was already gasping his name, legs locked around him, nails digging into his back hard enough to draw blood.

We moved together like we'd been doing this for lifetimes instead of hours. Each thrust dragged more confessions from us both. He admitted the numbness that had swallowed him for decades until my blood woke him up. I confessed the way I'd cried over a wounded fox last winter and hidden it from Maeve because hunters don't show weakness.

After, we lay tangled in the dim light. His fingers traced idle patterns on my bare hip while I tried not to notice how perfectly my head fit against his shoulder. The map lay nearby, its secrets still whispering.

"One more night," I said into the silence. My voice cracked on the words. "Just to purge this. Then we go back to being enemies."

He huffed a laugh that ruffled my curls. "If you believe that, little huntress, you're a worse liar than your ancestors."

I didn't answer. Couldn't. Because part of me already knew the lie was wearing thin. The flutter in my belly had intensified, and for one terrifying moment I swore it synced with the steady beat under his skin.

Dawn was creeping closer. I needed to leave before the sun weakened him or my sister started asking questions. I gathered my clothes in the gray light filtering through the high windows, feeling his eyes on me the whole time.

He looked at me like I was both salvation and damnation wrapped in one stubborn package. It made my hands shake worse as I dressed.

I slipped out the same way I'd come in, lockpick named Ingrid tucked away, body aching in all the best and worst ways. The rain had stopped but the air still felt heavy, pregnant with everything we hadn't said.

The walk back to the mansion blurred. My mind kept replaying the way his expression had shifted after that second time. My palm kept drifting to my lower belly, pressing as if I could feel whatever that strange vision from the alley had shown me.

I crept through the kitchen door just as the first birds started singing. The house smelled like cardamom and sugar again. Maeve must have baked through another sleepless night.

My bedroom door was ajar. I pushed it open, already forming the lie about where I'd been.

Maeve sat on my bed in pajama shorts and one of my old hoodies. Her wild curls were a mess. In one hand she held my hidden copy of a particularly smutty romance novel. In the other, the silver dagger our grandmother had used to kill three Forsythes in the 1800s.

She looked up at me, green-brown eyes—so like mine—narrowed with a mix of hurt and fury.

"You smell like vampire and sex, Dor." Her voice was quiet. Too quiet. "Start talking. Before I decide which one of these I'm using first."