Chapter 9 Unlucky Woman
Eva
he grabbed me by the front of my tank top and hauled me to my feet. His strength was impossible. My feet dangled, kicking uselessly. He brought my face close to his, the silver eyes boring into me.
He didn't speak. I wish he did.
He carried me, not to the exit, but to a heavy steel door set into the wall of the mine. He wrenched it open and threw me inside. I landed hard on a concrete floor, the impact knocking the breath out of me for the second time tonight.
The door slammed shut, and I heard the heavy clang of a bolt being thrown. A deadbolt. From the outside.
I scrambled to my feet, holding my injured wrist against my chest, and took in my surroundings. A cell. Bare concrete walls, a single naked bulb overhead, and a drain in the middle of the floor.
And a cot. I hated that part the most.
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I tried the door. I kicked it and hammered on it with my good fist until my knuckles bled. I screamed every curse I knew in different languages. The steel didn’t move. The silence from the other side was absolute.
Defeated, I sank to the floor, my back pressed against the cold steel door. The throbbing in my wrist was a steady, vicious beat. I looked down at it. Already swelling and turning a nasty shade of purple.
That’s when I saw it in the corner of my eye, lying on the floor a few feet away, half-hidden in the shadows: the torc. My one and only victory.
I crawled to it, movements awkward and painful. I picked it up. It was heavier than it looked, the silver cold against my palm. I could feel a faint vibration humming inside it. I squinted, focusing on the inside of the band. There were words there, carved into the metal in a language I’d never seen but understood instantly, as if they’d been etched onto my soul.
Until the moon is red and the wolf is fed,
my body, my blood, my womb are hers to wed.
Until she comes to me of her own free will,
this collar shall serve as my own kill.
I stared at the words until they stopped being letters and started being prophecy. Until I understood, soul-deep, that the collar wasn’t on his neck anymore.
It was on mine.
A cold dread, deep and all-consuming, washed over me.
My head snapped up. He was standing there, just inside the now-open door.
He was a man again.
Naked and covered in a thin sheen of sweat, the scratches on his chest were already fading. He looked calm and collected, as if he hadn't just turned into a monster and thrown me in a cage. His nose was already straight, with the blood gone.
He watched me, his gaze unreadable, as I clutched the torc like a sacred relic and I was a desperate sinner. He stepped into the cell, and I flinched back, pressing myself against the wall.
He stopped and raised his hands, palms out, in a peace gesture that was a laughable joke coming from him. “I’m not gonna hurt you,” he said, the drawl soft, almost gentle. “Not anymore tonight.”
“Says the guy who’s keeping me in a dungeon,” I shot back, my voice shaking despite my best efforts.
“It’s not a dungeon,” he corrected, a hint of amusement in his tone. “It’s a guest room. With amenities.” He pointed to a small bundle on the cot: a first-aid kit, a clean shirt, and a bottle of water. He must have brought it with him.
“Right. The Ritz-Carlton of abandoned coal mines,” I scoffed. “What do you want?”
He took another slow step toward me, and I pressed myself harder against the concrete. He didn’t stop until he was crouched in front of me, close enough that I could count his lashes if I had the patience.
I could headbutt him again, but I guess I would break my skull now.
“What I’ve always wanted, Eva,” he said, his voice a low murmur. “You.”
He didn't try to touch me. He just held my gaze, and the sheer, patient hunger in his eyes was more terrifying than any snarl. This was the real monster. Not the beast, but the man who wore its skin. He looked at the torc in my hand, and then back at my face. “You know what that is now, don’t you?”
“Some creepy-ass silver choker with a god complex,” I said, my grip tightening on the metal.
He held my gaze, and I had the urge to lower mine. What the hell was wrong with me?
“It’s a promise,” he said. “And a punishment. A key and a lock. A bargain made five thousand years ago between a goddess and a king who just wanted to touch a woman who wasn't allowed to be touched.”
I stared at him, the words from the torc echoing in my mind. My body, my blood, my womb…
“You’re the king, and I’m the unlucky woman,” I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm, a shield against the rising tide of vertigo.
His lips quirked. “Unlucky? You were the Moon Goddess’s High Priestess. The only mortal ever allowed to walk on her silver surface. You were purity, Eva. You were a god’s own property.”
I could hear the capital letters in his tone. High Priestess. Moon Goddess. Either this guy was certifiably insane, or my life had just veered into a whole new level of fucked-up.
“So what happened?” I hated myself for asking, for being drawn in by the sheer, insane sincerity in his voice. “Did you steal a moon rock?”
“I climbed the sky,” he said, the words so simple, so absolute, they stripped the air from my lungs. “I ripped open the veil between worlds with my bare, bleeding hands, just to get to you. And I knelt at your feet, and I begged you for one touch. One.”
He leaned a fraction closer, his eyes lost in a memory I couldn’t see. “You refused. Twice. On the third night… I forced a kiss. That’s all. Just one taste of starlight and sin.”
He licked his lips, and despite the pain that ran through my body, I was getting so pissed off at him.
“Let me guess,” I said, a little more aggressively than I meant to. “The goddess got jealous.”
“The Goddess was enraged,” he corrected me, a flash of silver in his eyes. “Her punishment was absolute. I was cursed to become the First Wolf. Forever hungry. For blood. For you.”
He reached out then, so slowly I had time to flinch, to pull away. I didn’t. I was frozen, trapped in the story he was weaving. His fingers brushed my jaw, the touch light as a moth’s wing. I felt a jolt, an electric current that went straight to the torc in my lap. The metal hummed against my skin, warming instantly.
My mind was racing, trying to connect the dots, to find the logical lie, the loophole. There was always a loophole. But my instincts, the same ones that told me when a cop was about to turn the corner or when a safe was rigged with a silent alarm, were screaming that he was telling the truth.
His fingers tightened on my jaw, a sudden, painful grip that pulled my face closer to his. His other hand covered mine on the torc, pressing it into my palm, the silver hot as a forge.
"Evangeline," he whispered, "I have a hard time holding myself back when it comes to you. And I’m starting to lose my patience."