49. Harlow
HARLOW
I close the last few feet of open space before the woods behind Havenwood House at a full sprint. I wait to hear footsteps pursuing me or alarm bells—anything that might alert people to my escape—but there’s nothing but the scratch of branches overhead.
Moonlight casts creeping shadows on the ground, but I’m running so fast I barely have time to register them.
Low branches tear at my hair as I sprint through the forest, feet pounding, dirt flying up behind me in clumps.
The thing about surviving the inevitable horrors is knowing you’ll be there at the end with all the worst monsters who have done whatever it takes to endure.
I can’t believe it was just a few nights ago that Henry lay beside me on the bathroom floor and stroked my back while I cried and writhed in pain. I can’t believe I knew he was a grifter when I met him but I let my guard down anyway. I can’t believe I’m still dumb enough to trust a man.
I used to think I was justice, but now I’m afraid I’m just the soft touch born of many brutal beatings. Henry was so gentle. Some stupid, indestructible part of me wanted to believe that was the real him.
He made me remember what it is to want. He summoned this forgotten longing to press my chest against someone else’s and whisper, “ Love me”—as if one command from my lips could summon enough devotion to fill my hollow ribs.
This mistake is an echo of every failed attempt at intimacy—of being so knife-edged that no lover could touch my heart without coming away bloody. I remember how badly I wanted a love I could feel. And then I learned not to want that because pain is a feeling, too.
Thank Divine Harvain I’m getting out now. If ever there was a time for good fortune, this is it.
My body is alive and energized from the run, but a squeal in the trees to my left draws me up short.
Bleeding woods! It’s hunt night.
In my rush to flee, I forgot. I’m in the hunt territory and wearing this stupid white dress, which means I’m fair game for anyone looking for prey.
Henry’s warning about Stefan echoes through my mind. Is Stefan also out here, hunting for blood?
I bite back a hysterical laugh as I spin, trying to get my bearings. There’s no simple way back to Lunameade. I have to go for speed, and if all else fails, I have my dagger still clenched in my fist.
My body springs into action, legs churning to propel me toward the mountain wall. I wish I weren’t wearing this flimsy dress that keeps tangling in my legs and snagging on thorns and branches.
It was always going to be like this. Running was the first survival skill I learned. I’ve been doing it for years—circling the garden perimeter with Gaven at my side, taunting me to go faster or do just one more lap.
The thought of Gaven sends my head spinning. He always seems to find me eventually, but now he’s probably just as at risk as I am.
Wild fear pumps through my blood. I doubt Henry is dead. For all my imagining, I still don’t know how to kill him. If I had something bigger than a dagger, I could have at least tried disembowelment.
A shiver creeps up the back of my neck. Someone’s close. I feel it before I hear it—the heavy sense of eyes on me—of being prey stalked by a predator.
My heart pounds and my blood rushes in my ears, the fear wild and completely uncontrollable.
An arm catches me around the waist and a hand clamps over my mouth and muffles my startled shriek. My back slams against a hard chest and my blade goes flying from my hand.
“You fucking stabbed me.” Henry’s voice is low and full of menace, but I go limp with relief.
My husband chuckles. The sound is bitter. “Oh, no. I’m not deliverance, lovely. I am that from which there is no escape. Not anymore.”
I try to scratch at him, but I can’t find any of his skin.
“You wanted to be caught, didn’t you?” He yanks my hair to bare my neck and brushes his lips over my thundering pulse.
“I wanted to kill you. Was my blade in your chest not obvious enough?” I snap.
He smiles against my skin. “You’re too well-trained to have missed my heart.”
“You’d have to have a heart to be maimed by such a blow. I aimed elsewhere in the hope of hitting something more vital.”
He sighs into my ear. “And yet that is an end I’ve met before and cannot meet again, thank the Divine.”
I stop my fighting. “They stabbed you in the heart?”
“They did what they had to.”
I squirm, but his arm wrapped around my ribs has me in an almost bruising hold and his other hand is fisted in my hair.
“There’s no getting away now.” He clicks his tongue. “I told you never to run from me, Harlow. I know which story you heard at the Raining Star Bar.”
The meaning of his words hits me. My mind flies to the tale of the hunt and the biting and the public fucking—the complete possession. Henry is Deathless, and he’s caught me here during a hunt. They aren’t mindless animals like the Drained, but they still have a wild side and a taste for blood.
I shake my head—because as exhausted as I am, as afraid as I am, I’m more curious and exhilarated. I’m not ready to stop fighting.
“If I drink from you now, you’re mine.”
I shudder against him, warmth rushing through my body in a mixture of hate and desire. How these two feelings can be so close and so conflicting is beyond my comprehension.
Henry skims his nose from the junction of my shoulder up my neck, breathing me in. “Is that why you ran out here on a hunt night, Harlow? You wanted me to claim you. You wanted to belong to me, but you couldn’t say it.”
“I hate you,” I growl.
“Hmm. Perhaps you wanted someone else to claim you. Should I leave you here and see who comes to taste you? You only have to say the word and I won’t do this.”
I still. He’s giving me a way out.
It’s on the tip of my tongue. Stars . I could surrender here, and for all his lies, I know he would master this animal side of himself. But I don’t want to.
He chuckles. “Oh, you don’t like that idea?
That’s good because I’m going to fuck you into the ground and sink my fangs into you when you come.
” I shiver, clenching my thighs together, and Henry wrenches my head back farther so his dark blue eyes meet mine.
“Do you know the only thing that tastes better than blood laced with fear?” He nips at my neck, not enough to break the skin, but enough to make me twitch.
“Blood laced with pleasure and fear, and I want all of yours. You’ve stabbed me and made me chase you out here and now I’m going to take what I want. ”
I want to run. I want to stay right here. I want him to claim me, and also I want to take my chance in the Drained Wood.
“If you hadn’t stabbed me, I would have let you run, made a game of it—maybe I wouldn’t have fucked you,” Henry growls. “Maybe I wouldn’t have made it official, but now I’ve lost a bunch of blood and I’m hungry and your scent has been torture since we met.”
Goosebumps rush along my skin as his breath ghosts over the pulse point in my neck.
“Should I bite you here?” he murmurs.
He releases my head and slides his hand slowly down the front of my body, cupping my right breast. “Or here? I know how you love when I bite your nipples.”
His hand continues its slow path down my stomach, over my hip, until he grabs my inner thigh. “Or here. I think that will be your favorite.”
“Let me go,” I rasp, but it doesn’t even sound convincing to me .
I don’t want to give him this win. How can I have escaped my parents’ control only to end up in someone else’s? Can I not just be free?
And yet, being with him doesn’t feel like a trap. I know better, but I am so tired of fighting, and I can’t even begin to touch the betrayal I feel that he kept this from me. I feel like I’ve wandered into the forest too far and can’t find my way out. This is so dangerous and I want it.
Henry spins me suddenly and pulls me into a kiss.
I want to scratch and claw at him—to shove him away and run forever—pursued but not caught.
Instead, I kiss him back. I open, letting him take what he wants.
His shirt is slick with his blood. I press against the place I stabbed him.
I want to hurt him in any way I can. I want him to feel sorry.
Henry groans and kisses me harder.
I have never met a man who liked this monstrous side of me. This is what I’ve wanted the whole time. Not the soft, delicate things. I want this raw, unbridled need.
He picks me up and I wrap my legs around his waist. He slams my back into a tree trunk, and I bite his lip hard enough to draw blood. I lick it away, and that breaks all of his control.
“Fuck, Harlow,” he groans, kissing down my neck, rocking his hips against me. “I can’t be gentle.”
But I don’t want gentle.
He shoves a hand under my dress and rips my panties away before fumbling with his pants. A second later, his cock is pressed against me. He rubs it over my clit, and I shudder. I swear it feels different, but he just waits.
“Anything to say, lovely?”
It takes my brain a full minute to understand he’s giving me a chance to say the word and stop him. Stars . The part of me that wants control above anything else screams the safe word in my head.
But the stronger part of me that wants so badly to surrender just once wins.
Henry searches my face for any hesitation.
I narrow my eyes, and that’s all it takes.
That small hint of a challenge and he thrusts his cock inside me to the hilt.
I grunt a guttural sound from being overwhelmed by the fullness.
Something is different—he’s big, but not the kind of big that edges on painful.
“Does it ache?” Henry asks with a smug smile that shows off a hint of sharp fangs. “Claiming makes the teeth come out and my cock swell. I’m in my full form for you, teeth, cock, and all. So I can be sure there’s no part of you I don’t reach.”
He offers no time to adjust, immediately pulling out and thrusting in again. His hands on my hips are bruising, holding me in place and forcing me to take every inch of him.