24. Ava

AVA

I n the distance, just beyond Pierre’s shoulder, I could see the gates—twisting iron vines curling around the bars, delicate copper leaves catching the faint light.

They felt like salvation. If I could just reach them, I’d be free.

Beyond those gates, Paris waited, the city of lights, buzzing with life.

I just needed to make it there, and I’d escape this nightmare.

My hand shot to my bag, fingers trembling as they wrapped around the cold grip of my taser.

With a quick flick, I pulled the taser out and without hesitation, I pressed it into his side.

A sharp click sounded, followed by the jarring crackle of electricity.

His body jerked violently, muscles seizing as the taser sent volts surging through him. He let out a guttural groan, eyes wide in shock, before collapsing to the ground, twitching .

I didn’t wait. My body moved on instinct.

I bolted toward the gates, weaving around him, yelping as his arms flailed out to grab my legs as I passed.

His hand smacked on my ankle and I tripped, catching myself just in time.

I didn’t stop. I didn’t look back. I ran.

My legs burned with each frantic step, heart racing in time with the pounding of my feet against the cobblestones. I could hear the blood rushing in my ears, drowning out everything but the sound of my breathing and the clanging of the gates ahead.

But I heard him stir behind me, his groan cutting through the night. The scrape of shoes on the pavement followed—a sound too close, too urgent. He was back up, and he was coming after me.

He swore, his voice bellowing behind me. “Come back, bitch.”

My pulse spiked with fear.

I pushed harder, sprinting toward the iron gates, my fingers already itching to push them open.

But his footsteps were getting louder, faster. He was gaining on me. The sound of his breathing, heavy and labored, filled the air as he closed the distance. I couldn’t let him catch me—not now.

My heart raced and my mind was a mess of panic, but I was coherent enough to know that this one chance was my only chance.

If Pierre caught me, he would kill me. That’s what he’d been sent to Paris, to that bar for—to kill me.

Tears pricked my eyes as I closed the final distance to the gates. Please. Just a little farther .

I could hear the noise of late-night traffic over my erratic breathing. Through the bars, I could just make out a stack of patio chairs beneath an awning strung with lights across the roundabout.

Out there were people. Beyond the gates was help. He couldn’t kill me with an audience.

I lunged for the large metal handle of the gate with a sob of relief and wrenched it down.

But nothing gave.

I tried again. Panic spiked my heart rate, adrenaline making my fingers shake as I yanked at the handle. “No, no, no.”

But it was locked.

I was trapped.

The sound of Pierre’s footsteps on the path behind me made me spin around, my heart jammed against my voice box so I couldn’t scream.

I held the taser out in front of me. The faint crackle of electricity buzzed in the air between us, a weak barrier, but all I had.

“Stay back!” I shouted, my voice trembling despite my best efforts.

I could see the cold intent in his eyes as he stepped closer, each movement slow, calculated, his smile a sick yellow beneath the old-fashioned gas lamps.

Before I could react, his hand shot out like a viper.

In a blur of motion, his fingers wrapped around my wrist, twisting with brutal efficiency. Pain shot up my arm as he forced my hand open, the taser slipping from my grip and clattering to the ground.

I gasped, stunned, as he kicked it away, the small weapon skidding across the pavement into the shadows.

Helplessness rushed in, and my heart pounded violently in my chest.

He stood inches from me now, his breath hot against my skin, and I was unarmed.

Pierre fell on me like a wolf onto a lamb, his body so much larger than mine.

Finally, my lungs worked again and I sucked in air, opening my mouth to scream.

He clamped his hand over it with such force that the nerves of my teeth jangled up into my skull.

I struggled, but it was no use.

He lugged me, kicking and thrashing, back into the shadows of a small side path with nothing more than a grunt or two of effort.

He shoved me face down over a crumbling tomb. The stone sliced my cheek as his palm held my head down, pushing harder every time I tried to lift it.

There was only a line of gnarled shrubbery and the bars of the cemetery’s fence line that separated me from the city, but it might as well have been a whole forest.

Pierre’s knife returned to my throat as I heard the sound of him unbuckling his belt behind me.

He pressed the tip of the blade beneath my chin as he leaned over me, his sour breath smelling of stale beer as he hissed, “How about you finish me off before I finish you off?”

His erection against my upper thigh burned through the fabric of my dress like a blowtorch. I imagined him ripping me apart with it and an animalistic terror took over.

Despite the threat of the knife, I threw my elbows back .

But I couldn’t get any leverage. I couldn’t hit him from my helpless position.

Pierre laughed as he cut through the back of my dress with his knife.

I screamed, tasting bile on my tongue.

But he was too strong.

I anticipated the sickening noise of Pierre’s violent thrust, but instead I heard a bloodcurdling roar of anger.

A second later the weight of him on top of me was gone and there was a crash of bone against bone behind me.

My knees gave out. I slid against the stone to collapse in a fetal position against the tomb.

Through tear-stained eyes I saw a figure in all black savagely hurtling bloodied fists at Pierre, his pretty face now a mess of swollen eyes and broken teeth.

He’d come to my rescue. My demon.

A rush of relief came over me as I watched from where I huddled against the tomb, scraped knees chilled in the wet grasses.

The sound from his snarled mouth wasn’t human. He was out of fucking control.

His blade glinted in the lamplight.

He was going to kill Pierre.

All at once I felt myself returning to my body as if in a crashing wave.

Pierre knew something. He knew the name of the person who sent him.

Scáth stabbed his knife into Pierre’s chest.

“No!” I scrambled across the path, my head throbbing terribly. “ Stop !”

I shoved Scáth off Pierre. And he let me .

Maybe it wasn’t too late?

I knelt beside my bleeding attacker, my hands pressing against the blood-soaked wound in his chest, trying to keep him conscious, to keep him talking.

His breaths came in shallow gasps, his eyes glazing over.

I leaned in closer, my voice shaking.

“Who sent you?” I yelled. I needed him to stay with me. “Tell me!”

He coughed, a wet, ragged sound, blood staining his lips. His eyes flickered to mine, and a twisted smile crept across his face, even in his pain.

“…won’t stop…” he rasped, his voice barely audible, “…coming for you…”

A chill ran down my spine, my heart pounding in my chest. He knew who hired him, who was trying to stop me from digging into Liath’s death.

He knew who took Liath.

But he was slipping away, his breaths growing weaker. I could feel the time ticking down, feel the answers slipping from my grasp.

“Who?” I demanded, my voice breaking. “Tell me their name!”

My breaths came in desperate little gasps as I stared down at him, willing him to give just one last gurgling gasp for air.

I just needed one name.

Just one fucking answer.

I searched Pierre’s half-opened eyes for any sign of life. With a spike of panic in my heart, I found them glassy and distant, the broken capillaries a far more vivid color than his irises .

He was gone.

“No!” I screamed, my voice tearing through the quiet, raw with fury and desperation. I pounded the ground beside him, hopelessness sinking into my bones.

He was dead.

My lead was dead.

And now I had nothing.

With little warning, I threw up. I gagged and coughed into the weeds beside Pierre’s corpse.

My throat burned and my stomach seized, even once I was sure there was nothing, absolutely nothing left.

Scáth placed his hand on my back, eyeing me from beneath his hood as I wiped the bloody back of my hand across my mouth.

I whirled on him, knocking his hand away, my chest heaving with each breath. I shook terribly—from shock, from the cold, but mostly from anger—as I balled my hands into fists.

“You did this on purpose!” I spat, my voice shaking with fury. “You killed him before I could get anything out of him!”

His eyes blazed as he stepped toward me, his jaw clenched, barely keeping his own anger in check.

“Are you out of your mind?” he snapped, his voice low, dangerous. “I killed him to protect you. He was going to rape you , Ava.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” I shot back, my voice cracking. “That was my lead! The only one I had, and now he’s dead because of you!”

“You think I care more about hiding information than keeping you alive?” he growled, his fists clenching at his sides. “Do you have any idea what could’ve happened if I hadn’t stepped in? You’d be dead, Ava. Raped and dead. I won’t let that happen, no matter what the cost.”

“You always do this!” I yelled, stepping closer to him, too angry to care about the fire in his eyes. “You keep things from me, you make choices for me, and I’m done with it!”

Scáth’s fury simmered beneath the surface, his chest rising and falling with each sharp breath. “You think I enjoy this? Do you think I want to keep you in the dark?”

“I’m not a girl,” I snapped.

“If I thought you could handle the truth,” he hissed, “I’d give it to you. But some things are bigger than you know. And I’m not about to let you get yourself killed just to prove a point.”

I stood there, seething, his words crashing into me, but the fire inside me refused to die down.

“You just don’t want me to know who’s behind this,” I accused. “Who are you protecting?”

My stalker grabbed me by the throat and dragged my face so close to his that I could see the blue of his eyes churning like a deadly storm. “I’m trying to protect you . Even though you keep blindly running into danger.”

I knew his wild anger, his uncontrollable rage. But this was different. This was directed. Focused. Aimed. Aimed at me .

Squeezing my throat tighter, I thought he might actually kill me this time. There was fury enough in his clenched face. His body burned with murder.

Scáth shoved me back onto a cold stone tomb.

“How could you be so stupid to leave with him?” he hissed .

With an angry snarl, he shoved up my dress and stepped between my legs, spreading them.

Arousal swelled like a heat wave between my legs, but I wasn’t ready to let go of my anger.

I kicked at him and rolled to escape over the edge of the tomb, but he caught my hips and forced me back flat against the stone.

“You left with him,” my stalker said in a choked-off voice. “You fucking left with him!”

He leaned over me as he unzipped his pants, his hoodie sliding over my hard nipples.

“I wanted to draw you out.” I grabbed a fistful of his hair. “You left me.”

His furious eyes darted wildly between mine as I felt the urgency of his cock against my pussy.

“I’d never fucking leave you,” he roared as he thrust up into me. “I love you.”

He began to thrust hard into me, fucking me like he wanted to kill me.

Pain and pleasure lashed inside me and I cried out.

With a filthy groan, I locked my ankles around my stalker’s hips as he fucked me.

What the fuck was wrong with me that I liked it? That I liked his insane possessiveness, his psychotic protection?

The deeper he drove his dick, the harder I pulled. Our mouths parted equally in pain and we gasped against one another.

I was out of my mind with the sensation of him inside of me.

I didn’t care that Pierre’s lifeless form was right there on the path beside us, his blood puddling around his ankles .

I didn’t care that his blood splattered all over his face, soaked his hoodie, smearing across my breasts as he grabbed them and punished my nipple with a cruel twist.

This was punishment. Rage that I’d done something stupid that almost got me killed.

I almost died , and instead of recoiling from that, I wanted to chase the feeling. Be reckless. Feel everything to the extreme.

Like I needed to touch the edge again just to remind myself I was alive.

My hips bucked up toward him as he punished my pussy harder and harder.

He’d killed for me .

Pierre’s blood was on my hands, the very same hands I had twisted in my stalker’s hair as I pulled him even closer to me.

“You make me so fucking crazy,” he gasped against the sweat-filled hollow of my throat.

“I know,” I said, clawing my nails savagely down his back.

My head banged back against the stone of the tomb as he drove even deeper into me.

He fucked me to hurt me and God, I wanted to be hurt. I wanted to feel everything.

The adrenaline still pulsed through my veins, sharp and electric. I could feel it, buzzing under my skin.

I wanted more. More of the rush, more of the danger. My body craved the thrill, and it terrified me.

After all the chaos, the fear, the almost dying—I wanted to push it further .

It scared me, this urge to seek danger. To play with fire again and again.

But the other part of me—the one that still clung to survival—whispered, How far can you go before you go too far?

“Why?” he demanded on a choke, fisting my hair in his hand, forcing me to stare right into his tortured burning eyes. “Why would you do something so stupid?”

My body was so full of pleasure and pain that at first the words were little more than a movement of my bloody lips.

His cock was tearing me apart.

My pussy juices were dripping down the edge of the tomb like blood.

“I did for you, asshole,” I said, biting at his jaw as he snarled at me.

“Liar,” he growled.

Clinging on to my stalker’s shoulders, I answered half in a sob, half in moan, “I wanted you to come for me.”

I could tell by the erratic rhythm of his thrusts that he was close. And I knew by the heat swelling in my belly that I was, too.

“I wanted you to show yourself,” I moaned. “I want you . Need you .”

He came into me with a surge of hot cum, muffling the groans of his orgasm with a mouthful of my breast, his teeth sinking in viciously.

The pain tipped me over the edge. I came right along with him, shuddering against his chest, grabbing at him as wave after wave rolled through me.

He sagged against me, breathing heavily against my naked skin, goosebump-riddled in the Paris night wind.

I don’t know how long we stayed there, foreheads pressed against each other, panting breaths swirling around each other’s cheeks.

But when I shivered, he pulled away.

He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and cleaned me up.

Then he shrugged off his black leather jacket and slid it over my shoulders.

It was heavy and warm and it smelled like him—leather and spice, a combination that made me feel strangely safe.

I blinked up at him, my mind still reeling from everything that had happened, but there he was, calm and focused, his hands gentle as he zipped up his jacket to hide my ruined dress.

His arms came around me and he lifted me off the cold tomb.

I pressed my face into his chest and I felt… safe.

His strong arms cradled me, holding me close against his chest as he carried me through the dark streets, his steps steady, unhurried, like nothing in the world could touch me now that I was in his care.

The familiar luxury of the Paris Ritz loomed ahead, but all I could focus on was him—the way his heart beat steadily beneath my ear, the quiet strength in every movement.

Of course he knew where I was staying, he knew which room number I was in, and… look at that, he even had his own key.

Tears stung my eyes. He’d been watching this whole time. Even when I didn’t know it.

He never left my side.

He’d always been there, my shadow.

My Scáth .

He didn’t speak as he carried me into the suite. He didn’t need to.

I could feel the weight of his emotions in the way he gently set me down, helping me out of my clothes with a quiet reverence.

The hot water of the shower ran over me and his gentle hands soaped my body and washed my hair until the bloody water swirling into the drain turned clear again. There was a softness to him I hadn’t expected, one that left me stunned.

He dried me with the same care, his hands slow and careful, never once lingering too long even though I hoped he would.

When he dressed me in a soft robe, his touch was light, almost tender, and the knot in my chest loosened. This was a side of him I’d never seen—a side I hadn’t even imagined existed.

The man who could be so brutal, so dangerous, was also capable of this kind of quiet care. It was disarming, in the best possible way.

I wasn’t sure what to make of this Scáth, this gentle, protective side of him. But for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel like I had to figure it out.

I just felt safe.

He dressed me in soft, clean pajamas and carried me to the bed, tucking the blankets up around me, his movements deliberate, as if making sure I was perfectly safe, perfectly warm.

I grabbed his arm before he could pull away. “Where are you going? ”

He kissed my forehead. “I’ve got to take care of something.”

Right. The body. Evidence.

“But I’ll be back.” He tugged his hand out of my grasp and I felt the loss of him immediately.

“You promise?”

“Haven’t you learned by now, Ava?” His lip twerked up. “I’ll always come back for you.”

I watched him from under heavy eyelids as he walked across the room, my body sinking into the softness of the bed, exhaustion pulling me under.

He paused at the door, his eyes softened, something almost fragile flickering there for a brief moment.

“I’m afraid, Ava,” he said, his voice trembling with vulnerability. “The next time, I might not be able to protect you.”