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I couldn’t answer.

Not yet.

The room disappeared.

The bed.

The fire.

Her.

All I could smell was rain.

Concrete.

Blood.

The training dummy breaking beneath my hands. The sound of plastic splitting. The certainty that’d settled over me afterward. I knew how to kill him now. That knowledge hadn’t stayed in the training room. It’d follwed me here. Into her.

My hands trembled.

Not with restraint.

Recognition.

I knew this part of me. I’d lived inside it before.

The Revenant.

He didn’t know the difference between a battlefield and a bedroom. He only knew pursuit. Only knew the hunt.

“Alaric?” Her voice came again.

Gentle this time.

Questioning.

I closed my eyes then forced myself back. Back into this room. Back to her. I eased away until there was space between us. Immediately the warmth of her vanished. A cold ache settled where she’d been.

She searched my face. “What is it?”

I swallowed hard.

“My head…” The words scraped out. “can still smell the rain.”

Silence.

“I can still see the training room.”

She didn’t move.

Didn’t reach for me.

She waited.

“I’m afraid,” The confession tasted like defeat. “That I won’t know where the hunt ends…”

My gaze found hers.