Page 22 of Mate of a Monster

I dismiss it. Adrenaline. Rage. Temper running hot because she’s close and I can’t get to her fast enough.

The corridor narrows.

I notice it the way you notice a door closing in a room you thought was open. The ceiling drops, torches guttering down to nothing as if something ahead is eating the light. I don’t slow. My shoulder clips the wall and tar smears across my skin, thick and warm, black shot through with gold. It should bother me. It doesn’t. I drag my arm across my thigh and keep moving.

The floor shifts.

Rathe’s marble is gone, turning instead into volcanic stone: uneven, slick with condensation, walls pressing close on both sides with the geometry of something swallowed rather than built. The air thickens with every breath. The sound of wings is underneath everything, a low rhythmic percussion.

My boot comes down and I hear the ground crack, feel it give. A flower, red as a split lip, black thorns curled like fingers, growing directly from a fracture in the volcanic floor. I grind it to pulp. There’s a glow on the leather where the petals burst, pale blue-white, clinging to the sole of my boot. I watch it fade as I run and don’t think about it except to note that it was there and now it isn’t.

The scent thickens. She’s close.

More flowers crack through the stone ahead, their petals fat and red with thorns hooking into the rock. I crush two more without slowing. The glow lingers longer this time, crawling up the leather before it dies.

The corridor spits me out without warning.

I pull up at the threshold because my body needs one second to process the sight before me.

The cavern arches overhead as the ceiling curves in deliberate lines, too precise for geology, too old for architecture. The air is wet and heavy, and blue light pools along the floor. What the fuck?

The walls sweat that wet tar, twisted among those strange, vined flowers, and right at the center, on a flat shelf of rock, she sits like a fucking meal.

I go fucking still.

Fitted in a black leather gown, it clings to her like she was poured into it, tight across her chest and hips, torn in places that are absolutely fucking deliberate.

Gone is the prey, and hello fucking hunter.

Her hair falls in dark waves over that bare shoulder, her breathing low and unaffected. With lips painted black, she looks like she chose all the steps that led us both to this point all to turn me into the meal.

Feral little nightmare with a painted mouth and a death wish.

Rage.

“You,” I say, and my own voice sounds unfamiliar to me.

She tips her head, that death-dripping mouth shifting just slightly at one corner, but she doesn’t run.

That’s worse than if she had.

I cross the cavern floor in nine strides until my hand finds its home around her throat. She comes up with me willingly, her hands finding my wrist and her fingernails already pressing in where my pulse runs.

Her heartbeat pounds against my palm, but her face remains passive, unbothered and completely fuckable.

“Liar,” I say against her face, my grip tightening.

She laughs, eyes peering up at me from below.

Her fingers don’t pull my hand away. They hold it there.

She wanted me fucking wild.

Lightning cracks down my rage, my guilt, and whatever else I’m feeling, turning my insides into liquid.

My grip on her tightens. I feel her swallow against my palm, feel the vibration of another laugh building in her throat, and the intent shifts under my skin, grinding into a new territory.

I’m not here to choke her out and fuck her until she cries.