Page 11 of Thane's Demon
But they weren’t.
Shock, yes, but not the fear that should be there after seeing me just kill a man with my bare hands. But then her wide-eyed gaze fell to the gun on the ground and then back up at me. Her much smaller height meaning she did this for a while until finally finding my own gaze.
She was pale, breath unsteady, hands shaking slightly, yet beneath all that shock, there was an impossible softness. Something gentle that radiated from her expression like awarmth the alley couldn’t chill. And for the first time, I truly saw her. Her hair wasn’t neat or styled but a wild, soft mass of brown curls that looked almost weightless. Frizzy at the ends, as if the strands refused to obey any brush, drifting around her face like a halo she didn’t know she carried.
The streetlight caught in those curls, turning them into something that looked touchable in a way that made my fingers tense. Because part of me wanted to reach out, if only to see whether they felt as soft as they appeared. Her eyes were the color of light hazel glass, bright and wide and shimmering as though holding back tears. And yet somehow still reflecting something stubbornly alive.
She had twin dimples that softened her whole face when her lips trembled, making her look heartbreakingly young, heartbreakingly innocent, and dangerously out of place in a world like mine. She wasn’t even wearing a jacket, despite the bite in the night air. The knitted sweater pushed up her arms, allowed me to see the goose-pimpled skin in a way that made my demon press forward with curiosity rather than hunger. I found myself wondering why she would step out into the dark this unprotected, this unguarded, this…beautiful.
I waited for the scream, for the horror, for the revulsion that always came when people realized what I was, because monsters didn’t get gratitude, they got fear. But she looked at me as though the world hadn’t shifted beneath her feet, as though she hadn’t just witnessed death in front of her.
“You… you saved me,”she whispered, her voice trembling but somehow steady enough to reach me through the fading haze of violence. The demon froze again, not in hunger this time, not in recognition, but in something that felt dangerously close to confusion.
A strange warmth unfurled beneath my ribs, spreading with a quiet ease that unsettled me more than any fight ever had. Onedulling the hunger and quieting the rage until, for the first time since my demon had awakened, there was silence in my mind. No snarling, no claws raking the inside of my skull, no demand for blood.
Just…peace.
I hated it instantly. I hated the way she looked at me as if I wasn’t a nightmare dripping with violence, hated the softness in her expression. The gentle tilt of her head, the way her voice wrapped around my mind. Her scent was warm and sweet and painfully human, stirring something fierce and possessive that made no sense.
So I crushed it the only way I knew how.
“You are stupid,”I said sharply, letting the word slice through the space between us. She flinched back at my voice, and because I didn’t like the distance she put between us, I reached for her. My hand circled her bicep effortlessly, but the second I felt her flesh in my grip, I eased my hold, afraid that I might hurt her. I then stepped closer and, with my other hand, I raised it to her cheek, needing to feel the softness of her skin. A tender gesture that didn’t match my reprimand as I told her,
“Walking alone at night. Smiling at strangers. Humming like you live in a fairy tale. You should have been dead before I got here.” I let her go, forcing myself to step back and give her space. She blinked as if coming out of a daze. Now flinching at the harshness, her gaze dropped to her wrist where the man had grabbed her. She rubbed the red mark gently, and something twisted uncomfortably in my chest, a sensation I refused to name.
When she lifted her eyes again, she still held that unbearable softness. Still looking at me like I wasn’t the thing that had just killed a man with one hand and reprimanded her like it was her fault she had been his target.
“I still want to thank you,”she whispered.
My stomach dropped.
Why?
I stepped back quickly, needing distance before the pull between us grew any stronger, before the demon reached for her through me. Before I did something reckless and unforgivable. She stepped forward as though drawn by the same invisible thread, her gaze fixed on mine. Gentle in a way that made me want to recoil.
“You should go,” I said, forcing the words out rough and hard.“Now.”
She nodded shakily and backed away, her eyes lingering on mine with a look that made the air feel too tight. She turned toward the glow of the streetlight and slipped into its warmth. But the instant her presence vanished from the alley, the peace inside me shattered like glass.
The demon roared back with violent clarity, slamming into my mind like a beast denied something it didn’t understand.
‘Find her.
Bring her back.
We need her.’
I pressed my hands to the brick wall, breathing hard, fighting the pull with everything I had. My chest ached, my skin burned, and in the echo she left behind, I felt a hollow absence. An absence that terrified me more than the demon ever had.
I didn’t know her. I didn’t know her name. I didn’t know what she was or why she had reached into the darkest part of me. How she had quieted it with a single frightened thank you, but something in me knew one truth with unsettling certainty.
Tonight was supposed to be just another job.
Instead, tonight had just changed everything I thought I knew about my demon.
And now he, in return, had just changed…
Forever.
