Chapter 24 Cora #2
“I need to ask you something,” Mira says gently, waiting until I look up at her. “If they gave you the choice... if they asked if you wanted them to have you for the year... what would you say?”
My face crumples. For a moment, I think I’m going to start sobbing again. Instead, I cover my face with my hands, my voice muffled.
“Yes,” I whisper. “God help me, yes.”
The admission hangs in the air between us, sacred and terrible.
“But it’s not me they want,” I continue, my hands still covering my face.
“They made that abundantly clear. I don’t understand it,” I say, dropping my hands to look at her.
“They told me exactly why they were doing this. Revenge against my father. Using me as a weapon to destroy him politically. And still...”
I stand and pace to the window, unable to sit still with the conflict raging inside me.
“The idea of it ending, of not having the three of them... of going back to my political fundraisers, of having to pretend to be the perfect mayor’s daughter.
..” My voice breaks. “It felt like the end of the world. Like I’d rather die than go back to that life. ”
I laugh, but it’s a broken sound—jagged and painful. “How fucked up is that, Mira? They’re using me for revenge, and I want them to keep doing it. I want Dominic’s hands on me. I want Liam’s mouth. I want Ryder’s...”
I shudder, unable to finish the sentence because saying it aloud makes it real. Makes it undeniable.
“I want all of it. For an entire year. Even knowing they used me.”
The honesty terrifies me more than anything else has.
Mira reaches for my hand, squeezing it tightly. “Maybe that doesn’t make you fucked up,” she says quietly. “Maybe it just makes you human.”
Her words should comfort me, but they don’t. Because I’m beginning to suspect that what I am is far more complicated than simply human.
“There’s something else,” I say, turning to face her. “Something I haven’t told you.”
Mira’s expression shifts, becoming more guarded.
“When Ryder was with me—after Liam—at the feast. He looked at me like...” I pause, searching for the right words. “He looked at me like he saw me. Like I wasn’t just a weapon against my father or a conquest or a revenge plot.”
I wrap my arms around myself. “He apologized. He said he was sorry for what they’d done at the feast. He said that somewhere along the way, I became more than just Mayor Pike’s daughter to him.”
“Cora—”
“And the worst part?” I continue, my voice barely above a whisper. “I believe him. I actually believe that Ryder cares about me. That maybe... maybe underneath all the calculated cruelty, they all do.”
I turn back to the window, watching my reflection blur in the rain.
“Which makes it even worse, doesn’t it? Because if they care about me, then what they did at the feast was a deliberate choice to hurt me, knowing full well that I would be devastated by it.
They could have warned me. They could have told me my father would be there.
They could have given me the option to refuse.
But they didn’t. They chose to orchestrate my humiliation, knowing it would break me. ”
I press my forehead against the cool glass. “And I still want them. That’s the part that terrifies me. Even knowing what they chose to do, I still want them.”
Mira is silent beside me for a long moment. Then, so quietly I almost miss it: “I know exactly what you mean.”
I turn to look at her, searching her face. “What do you mean?”
“Xavier.” His name falls from her lips like a prayer and a curse intertwined. “Even knowing what he is, what he’s done... I can’t stop thinking about him. About his hands, his mouth, the way he looked at me like I was the only thing in the world that mattered.”
She drops her voice to barely a whisper. “The way he said my name when he was inside me.”
I reach for her hand, squeezing it. “But he manipulated you. He trapped you in that maze—”
“Did he?” The question tastes bitter in her mouth. “Because when I think back to every moment... yes, he cornered me. Yes, he used the maze, the chains, every psychological trick in his arsenal. But when it mattered, when he was touching me...”
She closes her eyes, lost in the memory. “He never truly injured me. I wanted him. God help me, Cora, I wanted every second of it. Even now, knowing I should run as far and fast as I can, all I can think about is seeing him again tomorrow. Being with him for an entire year.”
Our confessions hang between us like a shared secret, dark and shameful and undeniable.
“What if that’s the point?” I say suddenly, my mind racing through the implications. “What if the Hunt isn’t really about physical domination at all?”
Mira tilts her head, waiting for me to continue.
“Think about it. They could have just taken us. The Blackwoods have enough power to make six women disappear without a trace. They didn’t, though, did they? They created this elaborate ritual. The maze, the pursuit, the psychological games...”
My pulse quickens as the pieces begin to fall into place. “They wanted us to surrender. Not just our bodies but our minds. Our sense of self. They wanted us to want them, to crave what they were doing to us even while we knew we should fight it.”
I stand and pace to the window. “The contracts aren’t legal protection. They’re psychological manipulation. By making us sign away our right to refuse, they forced us to confront our own desires without the safety net of being able to say no.”
My reflection shows a woman with wild hair, kiss-swollen lips, and I’m wearing clothes that barely conceal the marks they left on my skin.
“And it worked,” I whisper. “Because here I am, admitting that I want to go back. That I want more. That the idea of never seeing them again feels worse than being with them for a year.”
I turn back to Mira, seeing my own emotions reflected in her eyes. “Maybe that’s what makes them so dangerous. They don’t simply take your body. They get inside your head and twist everything until you’re not sure what you want anymore. Until you’re not sure who you are.”
We fall silent, the weight of our introspection settling over us like a heavy weight. I sink back down onto the couch, pulling my knees up to my chest. We were two women who walked into Purgatory three days ago as one thing and came out as something else entirely.
The silence stretches between us, but it’s different. Not the emotionally charged silence of before, but something deeper. Contemplative. Shared understanding. Or maybe shared shame—I’m not sure there’s a difference anymore.
I think about their hands on my skin. Dominic’s commanding grip, Liam’s cruel touch, Ryder’s passionate intensity. Tomorrow, I’ll be theirs completely. For an entire year, I’ll belong to them in ways I don’t even understand yet.
The thought should terrify me.
Instead, it sends heat pooling low in my belly.
“Twenty-three hours,” I whisper, breaking the silence.
“Twenty-three hours,” Mira echoes.
The contracts are clear—we become theirs. Completely. No escape clause, no changing our minds, no pretending this was all a terrible mistake.
I press my forehead against the cool glass, watching a lone car move down the empty street below. Normal people, living normal lives, who will go to their normal jobs tomorrow morning. They have no idea what world exists parallel to theirs. What darkness lurks behind Ravenwood’s polished facade.
What darkness now lives inside me.
“Father called three times while we were...” My voice trails off. I don’t finish the sentence. Don’t say the words aloud.
“My editor, too,” Mira murmurs. “Demanding updates on my story.”
The irony isn’t lost on either of us. I became the story. We both did. The women who walked into Purgatory as one thing and came out changed.
“Will you publish?” I ask. “When it’s over? When the year is done?”
Mira turns from the window to look at me. “Would you want me to?”
I consider this for a long moment, my fingers tracing patterns on the couch cushion. “I don’t know. Part of me thinks someone should know the truth about what happens at Purgatory. About what the Blackwoods do. About how they break women down.”
I pause, my heart hammering in my chest. “But part of me...”
I shake my head, unable or unwilling to finish.
“Doesn’t want anyone to know what you’ve become,” Mira completes for me.
“No,” I whisper. “I don’t want anyone to know that I enjoyed it. That I still enjoy thinking about it. That I’m counting down the hours until they come for me.”
I wrap my arms around myself. “I don’t want anyone to know that I’m grateful they chose me. That I’m grateful for the year they’re claiming from my life.”
“Yeah,” Mira says softly, and I hear the echo of my own shame in her voice.
We sit in silence as the night deepens around us. Twenty-three hours left. Twenty-three hours until I stop being Cora Pike and become something else entirely.
Twenty-three hours until my life, as I know it, ends.
And I find myself counting down every single second.