Page 49 of Thane's Demon
The truth was that distance would destroy her.
And it would destroy me too.
I couldn’t leave her in that apartment, with that father who chipped away at her spirit piece by fragile piece. I couldn’t leave her in this city, where men like Xue thrived in the shadows and considered her nothing more than a liability or a tool. I couldn’t leave her within reach of any world but mine. Not anymore. She had stepped into my gravity, and now everything inside me had shifted in response.
Watching her for now would have to do but I knew the time would soon come for more.
If I wanted her safe and protected…I would eventually have to take her away from this life.
Not with her permission. Not gently. Not yet
I would have to steal her.
Kidnap her.
Hide her from every threat until none remained.
My demon curled around the thought like a lover, pleased and hungry.
‘Ours.’
It whispered, voice thick with dark affection.
“Yes,”I murmured into the empty air, feeling the vow take root like a brand across my spine. “Ours.”
And until I could act on that promise, until I could ensure her safety completely, there was only one thing left for me to do.
Stay away from her.
Even if it killed me.
20
CALLING ON A PROMISE
ALORA
Imust have read the message a dozen times by now, maybe more. My thumb brushing over the screen as if the words might somehow change if I stared at them long enough.
Something came up. I cannot meet you today.
It was simple, almost painfully so, and yet it carried this strange heaviness to it, so I kept reading it anyway. Even though it made my stomach twist each time, even though I should have just put my phone away and focused on anything else. But I couldn’t, because the more I looked at it, the more I felt that faint echo of yesterday. The version of Thane who had seemed… different.Different the moment he’d spoken to me through our phones.
It was strange how, in his messages, he felt almost lighter, freer somehow. As if the distance allowed him to say things he would never say face to face. He was teasing, even playful in hisown dark, strange way, matching my witty sense of humor. I hadn’t expected him to reciprocate.
He had called me little fluff, little dreamer, little prey, names that should have sounded ridiculous or offensive, but instead they warmed something deep in me. And then there was the message he’d sent at the very end of the night. ‘Good night and sweet dreams.’ Tender words from someone who didn’t do tender. Not easily. Not openly. Not without looking like it hurt him to say it. All of this was easy to read from him, making me feel as if I knew him on some deeper level despite only just meeting him.
It made me wonder if maybe I wasn’t imagining the shift I’d felt in him. That small softening. That hint of something underneath all the hardness. Something he didn’t want me to see but kept slipping out regardless.
But now… after he cancelled… I wasn’t so sure. Maybe I had read too much into it. Perhaps the warmth I felt wasn’t warmth at all but something my heart created because it wanted so desperately to believe that someone like him could be gentle with someone like me.
I pulled my knees up on the bench outside the campus courtyard, the morning air cool against my skin as I tried to ground myself. Students rushed past me in scattered clumps, their laughter rising as if it belonged to another world entirely. A world where people didn’t have to justify wanting to be happy.
I glanced around out of habit, expecting to feel it. That faint sensation of being watched, not in a frightening way but in that strange protective way. One I had started to grow accustomed to ever since the alleyway. I could sense him, even when I couldn’t see him. A prickle of awareness low in my spine, a shift in the air. That feeling that someone powerful was close enough to reach me if anything went wrong. I had never admitted it out loud, butpart of me had already come to rely on that feeling. It made me feel…safe.
But today there was nothing.
No whisper of presence.
