Page 64 of Thane's Demon
Before I could cross the room, before I could wrap my hand around his throat and peel him off the floor, he lifted a single hand.
“If you kill me… then she’s dead,” he said far too calmly.
The words hit me like a blow to the chest, and my steps halted mid-movement. My demon also froze, its fury curling tight and silent like a serpent ready to strike.
I looked at Xue with a lethality that should have turned him to stone.
“You’re lying.”
His smile widened. Slow. Confident and most of all…Cruel.
“Am I?”
I followed the shift of his gaze down to the surface of his desk. A photograph lay there. Not of her this time. But of something else.
The Seal.
My Seal.
The one Dominic had entrusted to me. The one no one was supposed to know was in my possession.
My jaw clenched as he tapped the image with a manicured fingernail.
“I know you have it,” he murmured. “Which means you also know this. If you want the girl back, unharmed, breathing and untouched, then you will bring it to me. Only when I have it in hand may you have her back.”
My vision narrowed to a single point of white-hot rage. I stepped closer, ignoring the guns trained on me, ignoring the men trembling behind their weapons, ignoring everything except the bastard in front of me.
“You made a mistake tonight, Xue,” I said, my voice low and filled with a promise that made his guards edge backward. “Because I warn you that if she is harmed in any way, if she bleeds or cries or whispers one word of fear because of you, I will take your fucking head and keep it as a trophy. And the rest of your body I will nail to your fucking walls as a reminder to anyone foolish enough to cross me and dare to take what is mine!”
He stared at me.
Stunned.
Then he laughed softly, wiping the corner of his mouth with a careful fingertip.
“That, is the most I have ever heard you say,” he said.
I leaned closer, my eyes burning blue, letting him see what lived beneath my skin.
“Then remember it, because my voice will be the last you ever hear if you do not give me what I want,”I growled with deadly intent.
I turned to leave, the air shaking around me, the guards parting like scattered leaves before a storm. Before I stepped through the broken frame, I looked back once more.
“The girl is mine,” I said, each word a lethal vow. “Remember that if you value your life. Or stand here and watch your empire burn, before…”
“I fucking end you!”
26
RUNNING BLIND
ALORA
The moment Thane told me to go, his voice low and steady and wrapped in that terrifying protectiveness I was only beginning to understand, something inside me cracked. I wanted to stay. I wanted to fight him on it. I wanted to refuse to leave his side because everything in me screamed that the danger was around him, not around me. But the look in his eyes, that wild combination of fury and fear, left me with no choice. He wasn’t asking. He was begging without saying the words. He needed me gone so he could deal with whatever waited in the shadows without worrying about me slowing him down.
So I ran.
I turned and sprinted toward the end of the alley, my breath catching painfully in my chest as the city unfolded before me in a blur of people and noise. Every step away from him felt wrong, as if my body rejected the distance. As if some invisible thread stretched between us and burned as it pulled tight. I kept glancing back over my shoulder, terrified the moment I could no longer see even him standing there. But he had told me to go. He had trusted me to listen. And if I stayed, I knew I would onlydistract him, which might cause him to hesitate at the wrong moment. Might get him hurt.
