Page 34 of Hunted

I stand there, listening to the river lap against concrete as the knowledge settles heavy in my chest.

A hundred graves of young women.

Valentin Moretti has been desperate enough to search for Lyra not only among the living, but among the dead.

As I walk away, the night feels heavier. Every step back towards my apartment is a step closer to seven days passing. To walking back into that tower. To standing in front of a man who waited six years to come looking for me again.

I glance at my phone.

Five days left.

Time isn’t looming any more.

It’s grown fucking horns and a tail, and it’s hunting me too.

7

VALENTIN

The mark flares beneath my skin, a low, insistent heat that refuses to be ignored.

I stand shirtless in my bedroom, one hand braced on the marble vanity, studying the rune etched over my heart.

No longer subtle, what once looked like a dormant brand now pulses with intent, lines sharpening and spreading, colour deepening from dull crimson to something brighter.

More alive.

The countdown is in its final phase.

My blood knows it, even if my mind resists the implication.

I exhale slowly and as it has every night this past week, my mind returns to Eira Cross.

Not to her competence or defiance. Those I understand. Her job is dangerous, and while she has never met a monster like me, her habits are honed for survival.

And what is trained in can be trained out.

No, what troubles me is her scent.

Or rather, the lack of it.

She was in my presence long enough for me to smell her sweat, clean and sharp from movement rather than fear. Long enough to catch the faint, unmistakable trace of arousal she tried to suppress when I had her pinned against the door, thighs tight, jaw clenched, eyes fixed straight ahead as if daring herself not to react.

The memory alone makes heat lance through my body, my cock hardening before I register the response.

But beneath that, something was muted.

Missing.

No unique signature anchoring her presence in my mind. Everything about her scent reached me through fog, present yet not fully there.

I frown, fingers flexing against the stone as I drag my attention back to the mark deepening over my heart.

According to the Sacred Five Bloods Scroll, the mark distorts perception among its many infernal gifts. It sharpens hunger, heightens obsession, makes ghosts out of old memories and convinces the mind it has found significance where there is none.

That could be all this is. A side effect of the rune waking after centuries of dormancy.

And yet Morrighan’s curse was clear as night: the price of ending her was ending ourselves.