41. June
June
Our breathing was reduced to heavy, desperate heaves.
The only sound in the dead silence of the cabin as the adrenaline slowly bled out of my veins.
He finally shifted, propping his forearms on either side of my head. His dark messy hair was sticking to his forehead, and the ink on his chest was slick with our sweat. He looked feral—every trace of the restrained, civilised man he used to be eradicated.
And fuck, did I like this unhinged version of him. It was fucking hot.
“June,” he whispered.
I reached up and dragged his mouth down to mine for an intimate kiss. “I love you.”
He peppered me with kisses in response, then he buried his face in the crook of my neck, inhaling my scent like he’d just returned from a war, his teeth dragging in a rough scrape across my collarbone.
“As amazing as this is… the cabin is freezing. I need my clothes. I’m covered in dust, sweat, and you….”
He tightened his grip, his heavy hips pressing me harder into the wood. “I want you covered in me,” he growled against my skin. “It leaves no question about who you belong to.”
“I know,” I choked out, a dark thrill shivering through me at his possessiveness. “But I need my bags.”
He let out a reluctant breath, his hands digging into my hips for one final brand before he pulled away. The second his heat left me, the brutal, biting cold of the cabin hit my bare skin, leaving me exposed and shivering.
He snatched his jeans off the floor, dragging them up his thick thighs. He didn’t bother with a shirt.
“Stay exactly where you are,” his jaw locked. “Do not move until I get back.”
“I won’t,” I promised, shivering as I dragged his heavy jacket over my exposed skin to shield myself from the biting draft.
He paused at the door, throwing one final, longing look over his shoulder before stepping out into the freezing night.
The timber door slammed shut behind him.
I sat frozen on the edge of the table, my bare legs dangling as I listened to the heavy crunch of his boots rapidly fade into the dark. Without his presence, the shadows in the corners of the room seemed to stretch, crawling across the floorboards towards my feet.
The wind periodically let out a sick, hollow hiss through the pines that rattled the windows.
I pulled my knees tight to my chest, straining to hear the slam of the car door. But the only sound that answered me was the repetitive, dead slap-slap-slap of the lake water hitting the wooden pier.
One minute bled into three. Three became five.
I strained my ears, listening for the heavy thud of the Camaro’s trunk or the sound of Julian’s voice, but the only thing I heard was the wind whistling through the splits in the old logs.
Then, I heard it.
The faint sound of the door opening. My heart gave a small, relieved leap. I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
“Julian?” I whispered, my voice sounding small in the vast, dark room.
The footsteps that followed, were slow and deliberate.
A shadow detached itself from the porch and stepped into the moonlight spilling through the doorway like an entity.
My smile flickered and died.
The figure was wearing a dark, oversized hoodie, the hood pulled low.
But it was the face that made my blood turn to slush.
It was a white porcelain mask, bone-white and gleaming in the dark.
It covered the eyes and nose, tapering up into two sharp, curved horns that looked like they belonged in a nightmare.
“What are you doing?” I asked, a nervous laugh bubbling up in my throat. I tried to play it off, to convince myself Julian was just being an idiot, trying to scare me in the middle of the woods. “Julian, stop. Take that off. It’s creepy enough out here without you playing dress-up!”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t even pause. He just kept coming, his movements smooth and predatory, the white mask catching the light with every slow step.
“I’m serious!” I said pulling the denim jacket tighter around my shoulders. “I’m freezing, and you’re being a freak. Where’s my bags?”
He reached the edge of the table. Before I could even blink, his hand shot out.
It wasn’t the warm hand that had held me minutes ago. He grabbed me around the throat, his fingers digging into my windpipe with a crushing, painful force that cut off my air instantly.
I let out a choked gasp, my hands flying up to his wrist to push him away. “Julian! Stop! You’re hurting me!”
He didn’t listen. He leaned in, shoving my back flat against the table. The wood bit into my spine as he lowered his head. He didn’t kiss me. He attacked. He buried his face in the crook of my neck and bit down—hard.
“Ow! Enough!” I yelled, the pain erupting through my nerves. I shoved at his chest with everything I had, my nails scratching at the heavy fabric of the hoodie. “What the hell is wrong with you? Get off me!”
I managed to shove him back just an inch. He tilted his head up, the white porcelain mask inches from my face. The moonlight hit the eye slits, and the world stopped spinning.
I looked into the eyes behind the mask.
They weren’t Julian’s soulful, honey brown irises staring back at me. One was a piercing, icy blue. The other was a deep, bottomless brown.
My heart shattered. My hands went weak against his chest as the sheer, cold reality of the situation crashed over me. Julian didn’t have heterochromia. Only one person in the world I knew had those eyes.
“Cain,” I breathed, the name coming out as a terrified, broken rasp.
He didn’t respond. He just watched me through the porcelain slits with a chilling, detached stare, his hand still tight enough around my throat that I struggled to take a full breath.
“Cain, what the fuck are you doing?” I coughed, the panic finally exploding in my chest. I thrashed beneath him, my bare feet kicking at his shins, but he was like a statue made of stone. “Where is he? Cain, where is Julian?”
Cain leaned in even closer, the tip of one of the porcelain horns brushing against my forehead.
“The Lost Boys, June,” he whispered, his voice a low, taunting hiss that made my skin crawl. “They never grow old. They never die. But they always, eventually… get caught.”
He hooked a blade under my chin, forcing my throat exposed. His eyes—one ice, one earth—studied the frantic pulse in my neck as if deciding exactly where to slice. I was trembling so hard the table beneath me shuddered, my heart frantic and pleading against the cold steel.
“Julian will end you,” I rasped, my voice thick with the sound of fear. “He’ll never let you near me again.”
Cain’s laugh was a hollow sound.
His hand clamped down on my windpipe, and I fought like a cornered animal, my hands clawing at his grip. “Let me go!”
The razor-sharp edge of the dagger bit into the soft, pulsing hollow of my neck.
I froze. A sudden, sharp sting lanced through my nerves. I brought my hand up, my fingertips grazing the wound, and when I pulled them away, they were slick with a thick, vibrant crimson.
“What is wrong with you!” I shrieked, the fear finally changing into a feral, survivalist hysteria.
I drove my knee up with every ounce of my weight, slamming it into his midsection.
Cain let out a muffled grunt, his grip on my throat faltering just long enough for me to gasp in a lungful of air.
As he recoiled, the dagger sliding free of my skin with a sickening hiss, I didn’t wait to see him recover.
I threw myself off the table, my bare feet hitting the cold floorboards with a heavy thud. Julian’s jacket nearly slid from my shoulders as I bolted for the door.
I burst into the night, the damp, rotting smell of the woods hitting me. I didn’t scream for Julian. I just ran.
I sprinted in the direction of the tree line, behind me, the slow, crunch of gravel began.. He was taking his time—the terrifying, leisurely pace of a predator who knows his prey is wounded.
I hid under the shielding shadows of the pine trees, the dry branches clawing at my skin like razor fingers as I scrambled past. I needed to find the road.
But as I glanced back, the Camaro’s headlights flickered to life, two blinding, predatory eyes cutting through the dark, lighting up my hiding spot. He was playing with me.
My lungs were a raw, screaming agony, every breath tasting of frost and blood.
It felt like I was swallowing shards of broken glass with every intake.
The only thing that mattered was the distance between my bleeding feet and the relentless crunch of the gravel below his.
Brambles tore at my legs, the thorns raking across my shins with a stinging prickle, but the adrenaline had turned my blood into liquid electricity.
The woods went deathly silent. The clicking of insects stopped in an instant, as if a hand had been tightened around the throat of every living thing in the brush.
I slammed my back against the biting bark of a thick tree, my chest heaving. I tried to choke back my breath, pulling Julian’s jacket around me as if his scent alone could shield me from the devil.
Crunch.
It was a soft sound. To my left.
“I can hear your heart beating , June,” Cain’s voice drifted through the timber—a low, primal purr that felt like it was vibrating through me. “It’s a frantic, pathetic little thing, isn’t it? Like a bird beating its wings against a window, desperate for a sky that I’ve already taken away.”
I bolted.
Instinct took over. I ran, fleeing the terrible, malicious echo of his voice.
I dived beneath a low-hanging pine, but my jacket snagged on a broken limb. It yanked me backwards with a vicious tug, the collar digging into my throat, directly over the stinging nick of the blade. I let out a choked, pathetic sob, my numb fingers fumbling uselessly with the buttons.
Through the black lattice of branches, I saw a flash of white, the porcelain mask. He was closing in, gliding through the shadows with a smooth, terrifying grace. The silver dagger hung loosely at his side, catching the moonlight.