Chapter 25 The Wrong Man
(Adeaide)
She couldn’t breathe. Her lungs seized, her body turning to stone while her mind clawed at the inside of her skull, shrieking, “Move!”
Up close, the wrongness was worse. He moved like an animal wrapped in human skin—too fluid, too controlled. Everything about him was tightly leashed power, coiled and waiting to strike. His shadow didn’t quite match him, either; it dragged a fraction behind, broader than it should have been, horns flickering at the edges like an afterimage.
He didn’t call out. Didn’t ask her name. Didn’t reassure her. He didn’t speak at all.
He dropped to a crouch in front of the opening, one forearm braced casually on his knee, the other hand resting in the dirt. The tattoo along his arm darkened, like ink wetting fresh again. The lines pulsed once, a faint shimmer under his skin, and a ghostly echo of the same burn tingled along Adelaide’s own neck where his breath had touched her earlier in the night.
Adelaide’s voice scraped out of her, barely a whisper. “Wh-who are you?”
His head cocked slightly. Those almost-ember eyes flicked over her—taking in her dirt-streaked face, her torn dress, her bleeding hands. Something unreadable flashed in them. Not pity. Not disgust. Something sharper, assessing, as if he were cataloguing each wound and storing it away.
Her heart pounded. “Are you—were you—did you make it out of the village too?”
He didn’t answer. He smiled instead.
It was small. Terrible. Not kind. Not reassuring. A slow, satisfied curve of his mouth that punched all the air out of her chest. Her stomach lurched. Too late, her mind caught up.
That’s him.
This is him. He followed you all night. He bled because of you. He let you think you were safe. And now…
He moved.
Fast.
One moment, he was crouched at the opening. The next, his hand shot forward, fingers closing around her wrist with inhuman strength.
She yelped as he yanked her out from beneath the tree as if she weighed nothing. Roots scraped her back, dirt filled her hair, and then she was out in the open, the cold air slamming into her skin. The world spun from close, safe darkness to wide, brutal light in a single, dizzying lurch.
He rose with her, his grip shifting—from her wrist to her waist to the back of her neck—in one fluid motion that left her eyes spinning.
“Let go—!” she gasped, shoving at his chest. It was like pushing stone. Heat rolled off him, searing against her frozen palms, the solid wall of his body a shocking contrast to the brittle morning air.
Up close, his scent wrapped around her—smoke and iron and something hot, like scorched cedar. Underneath it all, an echo of the Beast’s breath. Familiar now. Terrifying. Her body recognised him before her mind could catalogue the differences; her pulse spiked with the same wild panic it had known beneath his claws.
Her fingers slid across the blood on his shoulder. The wound she had given him. His mouth twitched. Not in pain, in satisfaction.
Adelaide opened her mouth to scream.
He didn’t give her the chance.
He pulled her in, slammed her against his chest, and banded one arm tight around her waist. His other hand knotted in her hair, pulling her head to the side, baring her throat.
Panic exploded through her. Her limbs jerked uselessly, nerves misfiring as her body tried to fight in a dozen directions at once. Every instinct shrieked that this was the real moment the stories had been warning her about her entire life.
“No—no, don’t—”
His breath hit her neck. Hot. Hungry. Inevitable. The warmth of it sent a shiver racing down her spine, followed immediately by a wave of cold so deep it felt like it came from her bones.
He didn’t growl. Didn’t hiss. Didn’t say a word.
He bit.
His teeth sank into the soft flesh where her neck met her shoulder—deeper than any human could, sharp enough to slice right through skin and nerve.
Pain detonated through her like lightning. White-hot, blinding pain. It didn’t stay in one place; it forked, lancing outward in bright, jagged branches, filling every inch of her with electric fire.
She screamed, the sound torn from somewhere guttural and raw, but it barely made it past his hand on her.
Fire streaked from the bite, racing beneath her skin in jagged lines, spreading down her spine, across her chest, into her skull. It felt like someone was carving symbols into her bones, branding her from the inside out. Each stroke burned with a meaning she couldn’t decipher, ancient and heavy, etching itself into marrow and memory alike.
Her vision shattered. The forest spun. She felt the drag of his mouth, the heat of his tongue, the devastating pull—like something inside her was being yanked, claimed, marked. A thread she hadn’t known was there snapped taut between them, humming with raw, terrifying energy.
The world narrowed to three things: His teeth. Her blood. The burn of something ancient anchoring itself in her. Distantly, she thought she heard whispers—voices layered over one another in an old, forgotten language—rising and falling with the pounding of her heart.
Her fingers, which had been clawing at his chest, went slack. Her legs gave out. The last thing she saw was his face above her—splattered in her blood, those ember eyes blown wide and dark, watching her fall. There was something almost shocked in them, as if he, too, had not quite expected the mark to take this way. As if the bond searing between them burned him as well.
Then everything went black.