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For centuries, dying was the one thing I wanted and couldn’t have.

Now Sage McBride is standing in the middle of a cornfield, looking at me like the possibility of losing me is something she refuses to accept.

Fuck.

I lift my hand to her face.

Her cheek settles into my palm without hesitation, and something inside my newly beating chest twists painfully.

Then the corn whispers around us.

One.

She stiffens.

My hand falls from her face as I look toward Ward house.

Two men are waiting inside.

Malakai, who understands the Earth better than any of us ever have.

And Ezra, who has spent centuries fighting the Harvest so viciously that I stopped wondering what it might eventually cost him.

Maybe the Harvest isn’t trying to bind the three of us to Sage.

Maybe it’s been preparing us to be taken from her.

And if that’s true… the Reaper isn’t hunting tonight.

He’s being harvested.

11

Given

Sage

Rhett’s heart is still beating when we reach the house. I know because I keep checking. Every few steps, I grab his wrist and feel for his pulse. By the fourth time, he catches my hand before I can let go.

“Sage.”

“Shut up.”

His fingers close around mine. God, they’re so warm, but not the strange kind that all three of them have and not whatever imitation of life has kept them walking around Ward Farm for two hundred years… it’s human warmth… blood pumping through veins—a heart pushing it there.

My throat tightens.

The field called him ‘One’ then branded ‘Given’ on his wrist and I can’t stop thinking about what he said.

No. Fuck that.

I tighten my hand around his.

He doesn’t make another joke. That’s how I know he’s scared too.

Ward House appears between the trees. Every window downstairs is lit. The porch light burns against the dark and I’ve never been so relieved to see the haunted farmhouse in my life.

As we cross the yard, the front door opens before we reach the porch.