Page 45 of Hunted

‘You will live beneath my residence,’ he continues as if my refusal is ambient noise. ‘You will not accept external assignments without my approval. You will not conduct inquiries about me.’

I let out a disbelieving laugh. ‘You don’t get to cage me because you lost focus.’

His eyes flash, silver sharpening to something lethal. ‘I do not lose focus.’

‘You just did.’

Jesus, Eira. Take the win. Shut the fuck up.

The silence stretches long and razor thin.

He steps towards me, slower this time, deliberate in a way that feels far more dangerous than the earlier violence.

‘I summoned you for one purpose,’ he says quietly. ‘You will remember it and not stray from it.’

‘And if I do?’ I ask, refusing to break eye contact.

His gaze drifts briefly towards the skyline before returning to mine. ‘Then I will remind you. And the next time you will scream until your voice forgets how it works.’

The air shifts again, physically and viscerally, something older coiling through it. Something that hums against the edges of my awareness and makes my nerves tighten.

This time, he isn’t playing.

He extends his hand, palm open, not in invitation but expectation. ‘Come,’ he says.

He’s back to calm and commanding, not a trace left of his earlier slip. It would be awe-inspiring if it wasn’t stone-cold chilling.

Across the city, his black tower cuts into the night, a vertical promise of confinement and confrontation.

As I stare at it, breath still uneven, I realise something with slow, sinking certainty.

The night isn’t done with me.

Not even close.

9

VALENTIN

I should not have done it.

I stole her control. An indulgence, feckless and unclean, the kind of impulse I have spent centuries burning out of myself until only discipline remained.

And yet.

For several long seconds on that rooftop, with the wind tearing at her hair, the night yawning beneath her feet and her eyes boldly daring me, I forgot myself.

Worse, I enjoyed it.

Her lack of fear should have infuriated me. Humans are meant to tremble. Hunters, even arrogant ones, are meant to calculate survival with reverence when something older stands before them.

Eira Cross did not tremble.

She stared into the void and laughed. Spoke to me as though I were merely another man who had overestimated his authority.

And when she screamed, it was not surrender.

It was rage. Insult. The reclamation of dignity I had attempted to break and only succeeded in denting.