Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
acelynn
The next morning, when I woke, Kaius was already gone, which made it easy for me to slip out of the bar before I was caught by anyone in the club.
After the conversation last night and what he had shared with me, I don’t think I would be able to face Astoria or Nolan without them assuming something had happened.
For some reason, if Kaius had just fucked me, it would have felt less intimate than him baring his trauma to me.
I hoisted myself onto my kitchen counter, the air from the open freezer brushing against my heated skin as flashes of what I would have let Kaius do to me if I hadn’t pulled away last night filled my mind.
The image of Kaius’s teeth scraping across the most intimate parts of me sent a shudder down my spine.
I could almost hear the low growl that would come from him when I whimpered his name.
The spoon dipped in the ice cream I had just been eating clattered to the floor, ripping me from my dirty daydream and back to reality.
I was not just a normal girl thinking about the possibility of sleeping with a normal guy. I was tangled up with the president of the Knights of Lovelen. And I was the poison ready to destroy everything in his life.
The sudden ring of my phone sent me leaping off the counter.
I stumbled over myself as I made my way over to my bag.
Overturning the gray fabric satchel, the contents spilled across the hardwood floor.
Coins clanked to the surface, sounding like bombs detonating in the battlefield in my mind.
A lone, half-used lip gloss rolled across the kitchen into the living room, disappearing under the couch, never to be seen again.
My chest felt heavy, lungs refusing to fill with the air they needed.
But it was no use, not when the overwhelming surge of fear coursed through me as I remembered the sounds of Oscar’s screams. I could taste the metallic tang of blood on my tongue.
Tears streamed down my face as I tried to find where my damn phone was.
There was no going back from how I was starting to feel about Kaius.
I felt that in the silence when we both lay wrapped up in each other’s embrace late into the night.
Felt it in the way Kaius had stroked up and down my spine softly, slowly soothing me to sleep.
And the worst one of all—I had felt it in the featherlight kisses he had placed against my forehead when he had calmed my fears that had begun to plague my dreams, nightmares slowly disappearing until I was left with one of the best sleeps I’d had in years.
Shaking the bag once again, an unfamiliar cream envelope tumbled out of it. My trembling fingers traced the edge of the closure, picking lightly at where it was sealed, until I finally tore through the paper.
Inside, there were three different Polaroids.
The first showed me standing outside the red barn, glaring up at Parsons.
I shuffled to the second, my face twisted in a scream behind Kaius as he hovered over Oscar’s spasming body.
Foam spilled from his mouth like a death rattle captured in time.
The third had me freezing in place. It was Kaius and me.
He was leaning over me in the doorway, eyes watching me intensely as my hand explored his scarred chest.
Blood rushed to my ears, blocking out the outside world.
There was an unspoken passion that surrounded us, the moment so incredibly intimate, leaving me feeling exposed.
From the angle of the photo, the image would have had to have been taken from inside the small closet to our left, which meant someone had to have been in the room the entire time or planted a camera. I was going to be sick.
Ripping my eyes away from the photo of us, I dragged them down to the red words that were scrawled out on the white strips of two of the Polaroids.
The third was only marked with a single red spade.
My brows scrunched together before I slammed down the images to arrange them on the floor in front of me, taking in the full sentence.
MiNE tO haVe.
My mind whirled as I tried to unscramble the capitalized letters just as Kaius had shown me on the night of the rattlesnake. A scream ripped through me when the letters clicked together, and I slammed the bag to the ground, silencing the ringing in my ears.
Venom.
A direct taunt from the poisonous snake that Logan had left on my bed the last time he made his presence known.
Prey. Venom. Prey. Venom.
The words tangled in my throat as I whispered them, trying to make sense of the sick game he was playing.
Logan was watching me closely. He had been in Kaius’s room recently.
My throat constricted at the idea of Logan being that close to me, and I began to gag, but nothing came up.
I couldn’t stay in this town, not when I was betraying the Knights, and Logan was the wild card that was being unwillingly played.
I was either going to be killed by the hands of the man I once loved or the man who was beginning to become my favorite addiction.
Light glinted off a silver key sitting across the room.
Wiping the tears that were flowing down my face, I lunged for the set of keys and the photos before sprinting to my car.
I didn’t lock my front door. What was the point?
Logan had already proven he could enter without being detected.
I tossed the Polaroids onto the dash, letting them scatter across the surface haphazardly.
Starting the car, I peeled out of my driveway in the direction of Lovelen’s city limits.
Tonight, Acelynn Thorton would die, and I would don a new identity somewhere that had never heard of the Knights of Lovelen or the Death Dealers.
Somewhere I could blend in without feeling the need to constantly be looking over my shoulder.
Somewhere safe, Kaius soon forgotten about.
We would be a passing regret to one another.
Tears burned the corners of my eyes as I selfishly prayed that he would think of me often, maybe even as the one who slipped through his fingers.
The sun spotlighted the “Welcome to Lovelen” sign, and I could almost feel my body beginning to relax at the thought of leaving this cursed town.
I was moments away from being free, but a screeching sound began from the engine of my car.
Smoke puffed out the sides of the closed hood as it began to sputter and lurch forward.
I coasted the car off to the side of the road until it was sitting right in front of the welcome sign.
Slamming my head back against the headrest, I let out a frustrated scream.
Panic clenched down on my chest as I realized I was stuck on the border of Lovelen with no way to contact anyone.
Both the burner phone and my cell were lying somewhere in the middle of my living room, and there was no way in hell I was pressing the panic button hanging around my neck—not with the photos I had stashed on my dashboard.
Throwing two of the three images in my back pocket just in case, I searched around for the other one, but it must have slid under my seat during the drive. Whatever. I could get it later. For now, my mind was solely focused on escaping this godforsaken town.
Blowing my bangs away from my face, I leaned down, pulled the lever to pop my hood, and stepped from the vehicle. Smoke billowed from the engine, the smell of burning oil filling the air around me. I cursed under my breath. Of fucking course this would be my luck right now.
The roar of a motorcycle approaching filled the silence as I tried to fiddle with the radiator cap. Hissing, I ripped my hand away from the hot engine as it burned me. The stream of a headlight shone against the side of my car, and I could hear the driver cut the engine.
My hand curled around the lip of the car’s hood, anticipating the worst. Right now would have been a great time to have a wrench in my hand.
The crunch of gravel sounded under heavy footsteps until I could see a set of dark boots standing right next to me.
My heart quickened in anticipation as I waited to find out what they wanted from me.
“Running from us already?” Kaius’s dark voice filled my ears.
I peered at him from the corner of my eye.
There was a tinge of a smirk ghosting across his lips. “And here I thought you weren’t scared of anything. Especially the big bad Knights of Lovelen.”
Leaning further into the car, I turned to stare up at the man. “I’m not running away, Kaius.”
He hummed in amusement, settling a hip against the car. “Mm-hmm, sure you’re not.”
“I’m not,” I yelled at him. A deep sigh escaped me as I tried to regain my composure. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”
He lifted a single finger, brushing some of the dark hair that had fallen from my ponytail behind my ear. “Everything all right, kitten?”
“No,” I whispered, my hand reaching out to tinker with the radiator cap again now that it was cooler. “Everything in my life is going to shit.”
Kaius maneuvered himself around the car, one arm coming over my body while the other one landed onto my hand in the car.
I breathed in his cologne of old leather and amber, letting the scent capture my senses.
Digging my heels into the gravel, I refused to lean back into him like I wanted to as his words tickled the inside of my ear.
“If everything is going to shit, let me help you, Acelynn.”
Shaking my head, I bit the inside of my lip. “You can’t help me, Kaius.”
“I am sure that anything you tell me can’t be worse than the things I have done in my life.” His voice was a soft comfort I wanted to wrap myself in.