Page 177 of Crave
Couldn’t.
And through the rear window—blurred and smeared with blood—I saw Gabe.
Fighting.
Bleeding.
Ripping through one of the masked men like a fucking wolf.
Trying to get tome.
Screamingmyname.
Another man came up behind him and slammed something against his skull. Gabe dropped. Hard.
Everything in me shattered.
But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak.
I was a passenger in my own skin.
The monster’s hand slid from my mouth to my throat, holding me like something precious. Something owned.
“You were always ours,” he whispered.
And in that moment, I knew—this wasn’t just fear.
It was annihilation.
My body was still. But inside—inside, I was on fire.
I wanted to scream. To claw. To bite.
But the command still gripped me like iron.
I felt him behind me—closer now. The monster. The one whose voice lived in my nightmares. His presence filled the car, pressed against my skin like heat, like pressure, like something that would never leave.
His hand moved slowly down my arm, the backs of his fingers grazing from my shoulder to the inside of my elbow.
My skin crawled. Every inch of me recoiled, but I couldn’t move. Couldn’t cry.
Couldn’t even blink.
“You’re doing so well,” he whispered.
I shook inside. Silent and screaming.
Then I felt it.
A pinch. Barely more than a prick behind my knee.
Something cold sliding into my blood.
The drug hit slow. Creeping tendrils of warmth curled through my limbs like smoke. My heartbeat stuttered, then slowed. My fingers twitched, then sagged.
But the fire in me—it wasn’t out. Not yet.
I saw Gabe in my mind again. His face. The blood. The sound of my name as he screamed for me.
