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He rounded a corner. At the nurses’ desk, two more night-shift workers. One looked up, pen still in his hand. His jaw dropped open. “Sir, what the he⁠—”

Malakar hurled the heart-jar at the guy. Glass shattered against his cheek. The man screamed, a real shriek, hands flying to his face as blood fountained between his fingers. Chunks of glass and Brandon’s heart rolled across the floor.

The woman beside him started to run, but Malakar vaulted the desk, landed with both boots on the countertop, and jumped down behind her. I heard the crack when his fist hit her temple. She dropped to her knees, hands fluttering weakly.

He didn’t stop. He caught her by the hair and slammed her face into the edge of the counter. Once. Twice. Blood spattered. She sagged, barely breathing.

Alarms started. Malakar yanked me out of the swirl of noise. I tried to dig my heels in. He wrenched my arm and kept dragging me.

Down the final hall. There were voices behind us now. Maybe the cops. Maybe security. It didn’t matter. He was a force of nature, moving too fast, too big, too wrong for any of this to be real.

He dragged me into a side door exit and we slipped out into the night.

Chapter 43

Sick Devotion

Starla

I was thrown into a car, and soon we were speeding down the road. Brandon’s heart was long gone back at the hospital after he threw that jar at that person.

My whole body was frozen in horror. I watched him kill so many people tonight. He killed all those people just so he could keep me. It was the most sickening form of devotion and obsession I’d ever seen.

All for me.

“Malakar, please, you’re scaring me!” I wailed. My hand gripped the edge of the seat. “Please slow down, let’s just talk about this.”

His eye twitched, and his hand tightened on the wheel. “Don’t you get it, bluebird? I’m doing this because I love you. You’re never getting away from me, I’ll make sure of it. I’m never going to let you get hurt again.”

“You’re the one hurting me right now! Please, just take me back. I’m in so much pain right now. I need to be in a hospital!”

He slammed his hand against the wheel. “I can’t take you back!” The car swerved a bit, and I held onto the seat tighter. “I thought you’d want this! I thought you’d want to be with me. I thought you loved me.”

My mind spun, then froze. Did I love him? After a moment of consideration, I realized with a sick horror that I did. I did love him. In the most twisted way possible.

Or maybe this was just a trauma bond. Or something else. But it felt like love. He was my first kiss, my first major crush. He was my Milo once upon a time. Now he was Malakar. My kidnapper. My monster. My beautifully broken beast.

“I do!” I cried out. “I do love you, Malakar, just please listen!”

But he wasn’t listening. He was somewhere else in his head. Somewhere gone. I wanted the other side of him to come back. The soft side. The warm side. The hungry and lustful side.

I could still remember how it felt for him to be inside of me. How he fucked me in those woods. Even now, I became wet just thinking about him in that deer skull mask with those miner clothes, and how fucking delicious his arms looked.

I wanted to swallow those arms whole. I wanted to be obliterated by them, torn open, ground to dust.

The car roared down the highway. The night was black smeared with silver from the moon and the stars. His hands gripped the wheel so tight I thought he might snap it off. Brandon’s blood had dried brown on his wrists, his knuckles, the seams of his shirt.

He kept glancing in the rearview, then ahead, then at me. His jaw flexed and unflexed, pulsing with rage.

I wanted to say something that would fix it. I wanted to say something that would stop him from spinning further and further out. If I didn’t, he was going to crash us. Or kill someone else. Maybe both.

“Malakar…” My voice was so small I almost didn’t hear it. “Please. Just look at me, okay? Just look.”

He didn’t. He stared through me. He was somewhere else. Maybe back in that bathroom at the farmhouse, or the woods with the deer skull, or in hell itself. All of it was the same. I knew the look. He was gone.

I had to pull him back. I had to, or I would never see the soft side again.

So I reached across the seat. My hand shook. My palm pressed onto the bulge in his jeans. I squeezed, fingers digging in, rubbing up and down the hard, hot length. He twitched.