Chapter 8
EIGHT
MAX
I stared. And stared. “But… that’s not possible. We aren’t… bonded. I’d know. I’d feel it.”
The mask stretched in a grimace. “We aren’t fully bonded. But your heat forged enough of a connection to require a formal break before things can go back to normal.”
A formal break? What did that even mean? I shook my head. “I really think this is a mistake. Your rut has to be tied to something else.”
“Trust me,” he said with a resigned sigh. “It’s not a mistake.”
A tiny part of me took offense to the disappointment in his voice, but then my common sense kicked in. “No, you don’t understand,” I explained. “The stimulants messed up my heat cycles—I haven’t had one in two years. Not since the clinic. I can’t be the one you’re bonded to. It’s not possible.”
Something in me, petty and jealous and weird, growled at the idea of the Masked Man having a different mate. I’d examine that when Hell froze over.
He looked at me carefully. “I don’t think it’s from the stimulants,” he said. “Unresolved bonds affect people differently. Some go into a perpetual heat or rut, and others just shut down.”
“How would you even know that?” I asked skeptically.
“Doctors,” he replied flatly, emphasizing the plural.
Yikes. How many had he been to in an attempt to fix this before coming to me?
I stared at him some more with the knife held limply in my lap, completely flabbergasted at the turn in this conversation.
Had I stepped through the looking glass?
What Twilight Zone episode was I in? How could I be partially bonded—whatever the fuck that meant—to a vigilante stalker for two years and not know?
“I feel like you’re messing with me,” I said. I wasn’t sure what he’d gain from that, but it just didn’t feel real.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look. I didn’t want this bond, and I definitely didn’t want things to get this far. I’ve tried nearly everything before coming here. My life was fine the way it was before, and I certainly don’t want to bring someone like you into it.”
Alright, I did take offense to that. “I beg your pardon? Someone like me? And you’re what? A stunning catch? Should I be falling all over myself for a psycho who crawls through people’s windows at night?”
His jaw clenched. “I swear, I don’t normally do that. Not for people like you.”
I stood, gesturing wildly with the knife. “What does that even mean, people like me?”
He stood too, looming over me. The knife slipped in my hand when I held it out in defense.
“Someone innocent,” he growled. His sheer presence sucked up all the air in the room until he was all I could see, eyes full of desperation and something else I couldn’t identify. “Someone who can’t handle the reality of what I do.”
My heart beat frantically. He looked at the knife I held pathetically between us, seeming to realize he was scaring me again. His voice softened, and his shoulders fell from where they were clenched around his ears.
“Someone who doesn’t deserve to be caught up in the danger I live in every day,” he said quietly. “I don’t hurt people like you, Max. Hell, I don’t even talk to people like you. We were never meant to cross paths.”
“You followed me, though,” I threw back, voice only shaking a little.
Trying to gain some control of the situation, I took a step forward, pushing the knife against his chest until he retreated.
“Before all of this happened. You stalked me—terrified me. Why should I believe anything you have to say?”
His eyebrows narrowed. “I was hunting a serial rapist,” he spat back, hand wrapping around my wrist to steady the knife. “Joseph Weber. Who you were enthralled with, if I remember correctly. It’s not my fault it took extra effort to keep you safe.”
I jerked back, the knife clattering to the floor between us.
Joseph Weber. Joey.
The name was a punch in the face.
I intentionally tried not to think about him. After everything that’d happened, I’d avoided any chance of running into him at all costs, afraid he’d find a way to blame his dead friends on me.
And maybe I didn’t want to be reminded of how gullible I’d been, how naive I was to believe someone just wanted to be around me. Maybe I didn’t want to feel the icky, creeping shame of allowing myself to end up in a situation like that and not see the bright, flashing warning signs over and over.
Even more so, I didn’t want him to see that shame. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.
I never officially quit my job at The Copper Kettle. It took a week for the heat stimulants to fully purge from my system, and by then, I was so exhausted it took another week in the clinic to recover.
My manager had called a few times when I missed the first shift and then gave up.
No one else reached out. No one cared enough to.
Gwen had, though. She’d helped me pack the few things from my apartment I wanted to keep and then got me out of my lease. She’d also set up my interview with Mr. Marino and arranged for the apartment to be furnished once I was hired.
She’d offered me safety, and instead of dwelling on the so-called “friend” who’d done the exact opposite, I’d decided thoughts of him just didn’t belong in my reality anymore. After escaping that night at the club, I figured he’d skipped town.
Besides, telling the police about what he’d done would’ve opened the whole can of worms, which I obviously wasn’t going to do—especially with the way my life had miraculously turned around.
Beyond that, what was there for me to do? Confront him? Ask why he’d done it?
In the end, it didn’t matter. He was a piece of shit who took advantage of a naive, vulnerable kid. There was nothing to gain from opening those wounds, not when I had so much to lose.
Tasting blood, I realized I’d clenched my teeth so hard I bit my cheek.
“Fuck,” the Masked Man said, voice rough. “I didn’t mean that.”
“I want you to leave,” I said, voice wooden. I wouldn’t meet his eye, afraid he’d see the tears I held back.
He reached for me, almost as if to soothe, but I stepped back. “Don’t touch me.”
“Sweetheart—”
And there was that fucking tone.
Throwing caution to the wind, I bent down, picked up the knife, and pointed it at him again. “Don’t condescend to me. You know nothing about who I was back then, or who I am now. I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing with this bond bullshit, but I won’t be tricked again. Get. Out.”
Regret shone in his eyes. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry. People like—”
I preemptively flinched in anticipation of that name again, and the Masked Man changed course.
“—like him hide in plain sight. The most dangerous monsters are the ones who can fool the people around them. What happened was never your fault.”
I searched his face. “But you do resent that you had to let him go to take care of me because of it.”
Something complicated happened with his eyebrows. “I do what I do to protect people like you.”
“That’s not a no.”
He blew out a heavy breath. “That night changed the course of my life,” he said roughly. “And yours, even if you don’t feel it. I’m trying to fix it. Help me break the bond, and I’ll leave. You won’t ever see me again.”
There was no more resentment in his eyes, only sadness. Sifting through the shock and disbelief, I realized how confining an unwanted bond would be. Did he have someone he cared for? Someone our artificial connection kept him from fully being with?
My omega bared its teeth, the possessive little devil.
I let my hand holding the knife fall to my side again. “I didn’t know…” I swallowed. “I didn’t know he was a… a… I didn’t know he’d done that before,” I finally got out with a whisper.
The Masked Man only nodded.
“You were following him the whole time?” I asked, almost hopefully, as if I could rewrite the past into something more easily digestible.
The mask shifted in an expression I couldn’t place. “Something like that.”
I paused. “And what about the third man? The one in the hallway you killed first. Why him?”
His eyes hardened. “Finding him was a happy accident. Trust me, he deserved it just as much as the rest.”
I remembered the screams ringing through the wall before he showed up and the flash of someone fleeing when he broke down the door. Judging by what had almost happened to me, it wasn’t a stretch to imagine what the Masked Man interrupted.
What he stopped.
I sighed heavily. “Say, I believe you. How do we even go about breaking a bond that’s not fully sealed?” I asked quietly.
The Masked Man shuffled on his feet. “I need you to know I looked into this. A lot.”
My stomach sank. “Please tell me it’s not some kind of bloodletting ceremony,” I said. I couldn’t handle the idea of rituals or magic or any of that woo-woo shit.
“No! No, nothing like that.” The tension in his shoulders didn’t dissipate.
My eyes narrowed. “Then what?”
“I’ve already tried literally everything else. I wouldn’t have come here otherwise.”
“Just spit it out. You’re acting like one of us will be dead at the end of this.”
He gave a pointed glance at the knife in my hand. “Unless you plan on actually using that, there’s no death involved. Quite the opposite, actually.”
Confused, I shook my head. “What are you talking about? The opposite of death? Birth?”
Given we’d only known each other for a handful of minutes, I was getting pretty good at reading the expressions on a third of his face. Like right now, he raised a “Come on, are you being serious?” eyebrow.
“Heat, Max,” he said. “We need to share a heat and reject the mating bite. The bond will break, and we’ll go our separate ways. Permanently.”