Page 163 of Bitten & Burned
“Maybe, but you’re mine.Mon monstre. My… Anton.”
He blinked, shaken. “Even like that? Covered in carnage? With blood in my mouth and gore on my hands?”
I reached up, wiping blood from his cheek with trembling fingers. “You scaredthem. Not me.”
A breath shuddered out of him. His forehead dropped to mine, and for a moment, we just sat like that—his arms around me, my ruined hands cupping his face.
“I don’t want you to see me like that again,” he murmured. “I only want you to have good things. Beautiful things. Pleasant things. Never that. Never again.”
“If it means I’m still alive to see you, to hear your growling and see the bloodbath in your wake… then Idowant it. I want it, Anton.”
He didn’t answer. Just pressed his forehead to mine andpulled me closer. Tighter. I winced. My leg was still sparking with pain, shooting all over my body. Still wet and sticky from the blood.
“Thank Inera, you’re alright!”I turned to see my father reaching for me, taking my hand gently. He swallowed thickly when he saw what had happened, saw the blood. “You are, alright, aren’t you?”
“I’m fine. This isn’t mine,” I said, gesturing to the blood.
Anton straightened his back. “I apologize that you had to see me in… such a state, Mr. Marlowe.” Completely serious, despite the condition of his shirt.
“If that state is why my daughter still breathes, I’m not sorry at all.”
He pulled me close, hugging me tightly despite the blood.
A shriek from across the room startled me, and I craned my neck, looking for the source of the sound, and I saw Dmitri slamming Rellin down in front of a pillar, one of the stone pillars in the center of the room. His arms were drawn back, tied behind him, while he keened in agony.
Vale approached then, kneeling.
“I want to hear,” I murmured, patting Anton’s shoulder expectantly. He scooped me up and brought me closer. Closer enough to hear what Vael was saying.
My father followed.
Vael didn’t move at first.
He knelt before Rellin the way a priest might kneel beside a penitent—quiet, deliberate, composed.
He didn’t speak right away.
Didn’t demand.
He waited.
Waited until Rellin’s breath came faster. Until the silence pressed too hard against his ribs. Until the weight of being watched became unbearable.
Then Vael finally said, “Are you comfortable?”
Rellin spat bloodat his feet.
Vael sighed, barely a breath. “That’s not an answer.”
“You’re not getting one.”
“Oh,” Vael murmured, “but I will.”
He reached forward—unhurried—and wiped a smear of blood from Rellin’s chin with a folded square of cloth from his coat pocket. It was white. Clean. Completely out of place.
He pocketed it again. “Tell me your name.”
“You already know it.”
