Chapter 32
VI
Sting doesn’t slow down once we leave the main corridor.
I have to half-jog, half-limp to keep up.
“Slow down,” I snap.
“You’re doing fine,” he replies, not even turning his head.
“That’s not the same thing.”
His grip tightens, not painful but enough to remind me he’s the one setting the pace.
“Keep up,” he says.
The corridor narrows, the ceiling dipping lower, the lights spaced farther apart. Shadows stretch long across the concrete. We pass a couple of Rotters standing near a door, their conversation halting as they see us. One of them lifts his brows. The other looks me up and down openly.
Sting doesn’t stop. Doesn’t acknowledge them. Just keeps moving with me in tow like I belong exactly where he’s taking me.
The way his hand presses into my back makes my skin tingle despite myself.
We turn a corner and the space opens up, not into daylight, nothing like that, but into something wider.
A former junction point between stores, maybe, where the mall’s main arteries used to converge.
Now, it’s been repurposed into some sort of work area with men and women buzzing about, packing and moving boxes.
The ceiling rises higher here, revealing old skylights covered in grime and duct tape. Long tables line the walls, crates stacked beside them. People sort, count, haul. The air smells like sweat and something sharper. Unwashed bodies, I think.
The noise shifts with the weight of attention turning toward us. I feel every stare.
Sting’s hand presses more firmly into my back. “Eyes forward,” he murmurs.
I try to obey, but my gaze snags on movement to my left.
A woman at one of the far tables has stopped working. Her hands rest on the edge of a crate, fingers splayed wide, but she’s not looking at what she’s unpacking. She’s looking at me.
I grind my teeth until it hurts. It’s her.
The girl from the Hunt. The one I punched in the stomach when she tried to expose my hiding spot. The one who spat at me in the corridor days ago before Armen threatened to cut her tongue out.
She’s thinner than I remember, her face sharper, but the look in her eyes is unmistakable. Recognition flares first, then something colder. Harder. Hatred.
Her mouth curves slowly. Not a smile. Something meaner. Like a hand around my throat.
“Vi,” Sting warns, his voice cutting through the fog in my head.
I tear my gaze away, forcing myself to look forward again. But my pulse is hammering now, my skin prickling with awareness.
She’s here. She works here. And she saw me. Saw Sting’s hand on my back. Saw the way people stepped aside when we entered.
“Keep walking,” Sting murmurs, brushing once along my spine—a small, grounding gesture.
I do. One step, then another, my knee protesting with every uneven stride. We’re halfway across the room when I hear it.
A low laugh. Quiet, but deliberate. Meant to carry.
I don’t turn around. I don’t have to. I know it’s her.
Sting’s hand tightens at my back. “Ignore it,” he says.
But ignoring it feels impossible. The laughter follows us like a shadow, threading through the noise of the room until we finally step into the corridor on the other side.
I glance back once, just once, and see her still standing at the table. Still watching. Her hands haven’t moved. Her expression hasn’t changed. She looks like she’s memorizing me.
“She hates me,” I say, shrugging.
Sting doesn’t answer right away. When he does, his voice is flat. “Yes.”
“Fuck her.”
“Well, you got noticed,” he replies. “And she didn’t.”
“I punched her, too,” I add. “During the Hunt.”
“I know.”
“You know?” I turn my head to look at him, but his mask is angled forward.
“I know everything that happens down here,” he says. “Or close enough.”
My throat tightens. “Is she dangerous?”
“Everyone’s dangerous,” Sting says. “But you’re with me now. That limits what she can do.”
“Limits,” I repeat. “Not stops.”
His gaze flicks to me briefly, something unreadable in his eyes. “Smart girl.”
We keep walking.
The corridor slopes slightly downward, the walls pressing closer.
My knee throbs with every step, the joint stiffening despite the adrenaline buzzing through my veins.
I stumble once, my weight shifting too far to the side, and Sting’s arm comes around my waist. He pulls me into his side, steadying me without slowing our pace.
“Easy,” he says.
“I told you. My knee.”
“I know.”
He doesn’t let go this time. His arm stays wrapped around me, my body pressed close to his as we move deeper into the Rot.
It should feel suffocating. Controlling. Instead, it feels safer than I’ve felt in days.
We pass more people as we walk. Rotters moving through the corridors with bundles or tools, some nodding at Sting, others just stepping aside, out of the way. A few glance at me with curiosity. One man openly stares until Sting’s gaze cuts toward him, and then he looks away fast.
“Does everyone know?” I ask.
“Know what?”
“That I’m... with you.”
Sting’s mouth shifts beneath the mask, not quite a smile but something close. “They will soon, if they don’t yet.”
The words send a strange heat through me. Not embarrassment. Something else.
We turn another corner, and a woman steps into our path. Tall, sharp-eyed, her skeletal face terrifying in the dim light. She looks at Sting first, then at me, her gaze lingering on the way his arm is wrapped around my waist.
“Sting,” she says, her voice light but edged. Her gaze flicks to me again. “You finally picked one?”
My face heats instantly.
Sting doesn’t rise to the bait. “Move.”
She smirks. “Careful. Runts don’t last long when they get attention.”
His fingers tighten against my ribs. “She’s with me.”
A beat passes. The woman’s expression shifts to something between amusement and calculation. Then she steps aside, gesturing for us to pass.
Sting moves forward without another word, his arm still firm around me.
My heart hammers as we walk past her. I feel her eyes on my back the whole way.
“What does that mean?” I whisper once we’re out of earshot. “That you picked one?”
“It means people won’t touch you without going through me,” he replies.
“And if they do?”
“They won’t do it twice.”
The certainty in his voice sends a shiver down my spine. Not fear. Something closer to relief.
“That’s going to make people angry, isn’t it?”
Sting’s arm tightens around me. “Let them be angry.”
We keep moving, the corridor narrowing again, the air growing damper. My knee protests again, a sharp ache shooting up my leg, but I grit my teeth and push through it.
Sting glances down at me once, his gaze assessing, but he doesn’t stop. “Almost there,” he says.
I don’t ask where “there” is. I just follow.
Because right now, with his arm around me and the weight of all those stares still prickling at my back, I don’t have anywhere else to go.