Chapter 6 #2
His mouth curved, dark amusement ghosting across his features. “Then you won’t live long enough to regret it.” His hand slid down my throat, over my racing heart. “Because the Hunt begins tonight, and every eye will be on you.”
The words hit like a bell in a quiet room. I had expected threats, fears, curses—but not that. Not some courtly sport wrapped up in fangs and silk.
“Explain,” I signed before I could stop myself. My fingers were clumsy with the tremor under my skin.
He laughed, a sound without humor. “You’d already heard the name.”
“I’ve heard nothing” I signed, my panic rising by the second. “You didn’t even give me the where, the when, or the how.”
Kieran’s thumb pressed once more at the scar, light enough to be tender, heavy enough to be ownership.
He let his hand fall from my chest and stepped back, giving the room a breath.
“The Hunt is as old as my bloodline,” he said.
“A provincial rite and a Court spectacle. Nobles pair with companions—gifts, displays, sometimes wagers. Tonight, the hunters are not hunting beasts in the wood. They hunt the ones who stand beside them, to see who will falter and who will hold. It’s a test of nerve, sometimes a test of flesh.
Tonight, you won’t be hiding in silk in my chambers.
You’ll be on the field, visible to all. You’ll be watched, prodded, invited to fail.
If you fail—if you look weak—this place will devour you. ”
So that’s what Elias had meant. Not a feast. Not a dance. A spectacle of predators and prey, and I would be shoved to the center of it. A game for them, a death sentence for me.
My throat closed. “So you bring me to a hunt where I’m the quarry,” I signed through shaking fingers. “And you think that’s protection?”
“I think it’s the only thing that will keep the daggers from hitting the right places,” he said it softly, like a confession.
“You standing with me is a statement. A stranger no one in Court knows, an outsider, an oddity. But if I parade you as mine—as my consort, my companion—then they have to account for you. A man who lays a hand on my consort answers to me and will pay in blood. That will slow them down. It won’t fix everything, but it buys us space.
And tonight, I’ll buy us as much as I can. ”
The warning settled into me cold and absolute. He expected me to perform. He expected me to wear seduction so convincingly that it looked like belonging. He expected me to make people believe I wanted him.
I had never been taught to perform desire for survival.
Time had taught me to stand steady. To listen.
To keep secrets. Now I had to become a lie made flesh—practiced, polished, and deadly.
And Kieran stood so close I could count every fleck of red as it bled into his irises. He expected me to learn fast.
He loosened his grip once, just a breath, and for a moment—the briefest flash—the man who’d scooped me from blood and bargaining looked almost human. Protective. Fractured. Dangerous in ways that had nothing to do with courtcraft.
“Tonight,” he said quieter, as if offering me a choice that was not a choice at all, “you do this for me. For my life. For yours.”
Kieran’s thumb lingered at my throat, stroking the scar like it was a tether he meant to use.
“You’ve lived your whole life hiding reactions to cruelty, I’d bet,” he murmured, his breath brushing my cheek.
“If the Divide is anything like the Court, any slight, any handicap, is a liability, a weakness. I don’t doubt you can keep your face stone when they spit at you. That’s not what I’m worried about.”
His hand slid lower, flattening over my chest where my pulse beat wildly against his palm.
“This,” he murmured, his voice dangerously close to a growl.
“When I put my hand on your waist in front of them, when I bend close, when I kiss your hand, your neck—this is what will betray you. Every vampire in the room will hear the way your heart flutters. They’ll scent the truth of your nerves.
If you look like prey in my arms, they will know it. ”
He moved in until his chest was a hard wall against me, his scent drowning my lungs—iron and smoke, old leather, and something darker, the faint metallic tang of blood.
For a second, the world narrowed to that smell and the heat of him; the air seemed to shrink around us.
His eyes slid down, blue at the edge and liquid red at the center, a flash of fang-sharp hunger that set my teeth on edge.
He leaned in until they grazed the skin just beneath my jaw. The contact was almost nothing—a whisper of lips, a ghost of breath, but my body betrayed me almost instantly.
My skin prickled as a tremor skimmed down my arms. Heat pooled low in my belly, an unwelcome curiosity tangling with the primal, more urgent need to stay alive.
He was a vampire for Evara’s sake. A predator built to smell weakness and taste fear, a beast, and yet, I couldn’t make myself move from that spot.
My breath came shorter as an ache uncoiled in all the wrong places.
Half of me wanted nothing to do with him, to shove him away, to take his blade and run him through no matter what it cost me just to prove I could. The other half burned to know what his bite would feel like. Frozen, my pulse hammered, loud and accusing.
Kieran’s lips curved against my throat, lingering at the hollow beneath my jaw. “There,” he said, voice low, satisfied. “You’ve failed already. Your heart gave you away. But your scent…”
He let the word drip, tasting me like prey. His tongue darted once, sampling the rapid beat in my throat before he pulled back enough to meet my gaze. His eyes flashed red as his mouth curved in something close to cruel delight. “It means you’ll at least be convincing, even when you lie.”
Heat scorched my face. Shame tangled with the rush of something darker. My hands flew in clipped signs. “I’m here to save your ass, not play games.”
He laughed, a rough sound threaded with hunger as he braced me tighter against the wall.
“Games are the only way anyone survives this Court,” he murmured, thumb still circling my scar.
“Every word, every touch, every stolen breath is a piece on the board. And tonight, little liar, you’re mine to play. ”
My pulse faltered under the weight of it, and for the first time since leaving the Divide, I didn’t know which of us would devour the other first.