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I wanted to pull away, to shake my head, but I’d lost too much blood, all I could do was lie helpless in his arms.

“I want to make you suffer in every way it’s possible to make a being suffer, for no other reason than the pleasure it will give me. I want to feed from you until you are close to death. I want to fuck every hole in your emaciated body, torture you to the edge of death, then bring you back from the brink, and do it all over again.”

I managed a pathetic jerk in his arms.

“Are you game, little witch?”

“N-no. Please, please let me go.” I knew begging was pointless, he probably enjoyed it, I’d seen inside him, but my will to live didn’t give a fuck about common sense.

He made a tutting sound and gripped the sides of my head. “Being trapped here will hurt all the more while you’re missing your mate, won’t it, Jasmine?”

His power pulsed inside my head, seeking out the walls he’d created, and a moment later—they crashed. An emotional wound tore open inside me, and I screamed.

My body jerked to the side, and he tossed me back into the alternate reality he’d created, still in the same room inside his house—but where no one could ever find me.

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Chapter 32

Ren

* * *

Xavier jogged down the stairs at the front of his house, got in his car, and sped off.

I watched the car until it turned at the end of the street and disappeared from view. The house was dark, no movement coming from inside. He’d turned off all the lights when he left, which I hoped meant he planned on being gone a while or, better yet, all night.

Xavier said he didn’t know where Jasmine was, but there was something about him that set my fox off, something inside me that told me I needed to be here. I sure as hell didn’t trust that male. Staying tucked in the shadows, I pulled my phone from my pocket and hit Willow’s number.

“You there?” she said.

“Yeah, and I’ve got my opening. Still not feeling any magic. There definitely aren’t any wards, just the security system.”

“Piece of cake,” she said.

Tugging the hood of my sweatshirt up, I ran across the street. I hadn’t told Willow the address or whose house I was breaking into because she’d be here in a heartbeat. Yes, she could look after herself, but being her familiar meant her safety was my priority. It didn’t matter that she didn’t need my protection, that she never really had, but that instinct never went away, and she knew better than to force me to divide my protective instincts between her and Jasmine. If my female was in there, worrying about them both could cause me to make a mistake.

“Cakewalk,” I said, my heart beating faster as a surge of anticipation, of urgency filled me.

“Now I want cake,” she said.

“When don’t you?”

“Good point. You sure the house’s empty?”

“It’s empty.” I’d been watching the place for hours, and no one else had come in or out until now.

“Okay, this is just your straightforward, run-of-the-mill B and E. Don’t loiter. Don’t fuck around in one room too long. Keep your ears pricked. You need to be scenting constantly—”

“I got this, Wills.” Her fear for me was bleeding down the line.

She was quiet a beat. “I know you do.”

I rushed up the steps. “I’m at the door,” I said low, scanning the street.

“You know what to do,” she said.

Yeah, I did. I picked the lock easily, then shut the door behind me. No sounds, no movement greeted me. I quickly got out the vial, popped the cork, poured Willow’s blood onto my palm in an X, then hovered it above the security panel. “Ready.”