Page 125 of Hunted in the Shadows
He made to take my hand, desperate to further the physical bond between us. I was suddenly and acutely aware that he was human and I was not.
Butwashe still fully human, if he could do such inhuman things?
“That’s not your job,” I hissed, shoving his chest. Jon’s hand fell away from my cheek as he let the blow push him back. “You’re not indebted to me! Don’t act like a caretaker, like I’m some damn child for you to worry over. What’s next, a collar?”
Jon’s eyes flashed angrily, sending a chill down my spine. He never looked at me like that. Not since he hunted me down in the old Dottage house, suspecting me of bloodshed. The sky around us darkened with plumes of silver and shadow.Hiscolors.
“Fuck, it’s not that! You really think that’s how I see you?” Jon asked roughly.
“You tell me.”
His jaw set. “You’reinsaneif you think—”
“What the hell would you callthat?”I all but shrieked, acid in my blood.
He snapped forward, seizing me by the shoulders. Shaking me. Shouting, “I can’t lose you!”
My voice was gone. I gaped up into the storm of emotion in his face—still beautiful even when frightening. As his raised voice hit me, the pink-crimson sky of the spectral realm vanished entirely behind the shadows like swirling black clouds had rolled over the sun. Wind gusted around us. I’d never conjured wind here before—it washim.My heart raced at the notion of what Jon was doing without so much as a whispered intention.
I felt limp in his grasp. His expression crumpled like he was grieving me right then, like he had grieved me a dozen times already. Though the plane dulled the heat between our bodies, Jon’s grip was bruisingly possessive, even as his hands moved from my shoulders to cradle my face.
“I can’t make the right call anymore,” he said, voice lower. “I would do terrible things to keep you safe. Because I—” He faltered, Adam’s apple bobbing in the strong curve of his neck. “Because I love you, Sylv.”
My mouth dropped open, but I couldn’t form a single word. Had he said this to me any other day, I would have been dizzy with joy. My heart clenched around his words, holding fast. But here, after what had happened—I was terrified.
You can’t love me, too.
We can’t be together.
Jon’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Fuck. I’m sorry. I know it’d be easier if I didn’t. I know that you deserve someone better than me.” His eyes shuttered like he couldn’t stand my stunned expression any longer. “Something’s changed in me since we met. I can’t ignore it anymore. When I’m with you, I—I’m not drowning.”
We can’t, we can’t, we can’t—but the reasons why were harder to remember when Jon held me like this. Like I was the only real thing in a fucked-up world.
There was no regret in his gaze when he dared to look at me again, but a certain resignation surfaced. I had no doubt then thathe’d been harboring the same insecurities that burned through me like poison. Perhaps he thought I was coming up with the gentlest way to reject him.
Yes—that’s what I had to do. This was my moment, my chance to make the difficult choice to save us both. I would turn him away, tell him to find someone else.Anyoneelse.
My hand balled into a fist against his shirt. The firm wall of muscle pressed against my body had me magnetized.
I couldn’t stop myself.
“I love you, too,” I whispered. “A lot. Too much.” The words left me in a freefall—weightless and terrified. I swallowed hard, peering up into his face. I was broken for him, and he would break himself for me. “Why can’t you go find another girl who won’t hurt you?”
“I don’t want anyone else,” Jon said, unwavering.
I swore he could see right through me. It pulled tears into my eyes—happy, terrified tears.
“You’re crazy,” I scoffed.
His lips curved. “No more than you,” he said softly. His eyes kept flicking to my mouth. His grip was no longer desperate but tender.
Still, as my chest roiled with emotions, I resisted. “You can’t ignore how doomed we are,” I insisted. “Without a gemstone, you know we’re only a momentary dream. But you won’t admit it, will you?”
“The world is wider than Louisiana. There have to be other gems out there, waiting for you to get your hands on them.” Jon pulled a face, grimacing if only to pull a smile out of me. “Maybe a few of them aren’t surrounded by psycho warrior-fairies with a power fetish.”
Our faces were so close, I felt his breath against mine. “People look at us like we’re freaks. Even Cliff. My own mother would bedisgusted. She would kill you if she knew—maybe me, too, while she’s at it.”
Finally, the smallest trickle of uncertainty lined his face. I saw it in the shadows that flickered in his eyes—yes, he knew. The way those villagers assumed I was his captive on sight. The way that killing me at the hunters’ outpost was the only way those bastards could understand why we’d exist within reach of each other.
