CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

I made it.

I found the familiar stone arch with the rusty gate. It was a miracle given the vast nothing that pushed in all around me. But I tore up the uneven path, crying out once when a jagged chunk of rock cut into the underside of my foot.

I didn't stop.

I fumbled with cold, stiff fingers, fighting with the latch.

"Open!" I snarled at it.

After several tugs, the rusty latch gave, and the barricade swung open with a shriek that nearly sent me sprawling into the muck. Mud squished between my toes and slipped beneath my feet as I scrambled up the Widow's Back. Most of the light was gone, but I had just enough illumination to reach the top and the open mouth of darkness created by the canopy of branches knotted overhead, keeping the world at bay.

I know the path, I reminded myself. I'd walked it a dozen times. I just had to stay straight.

Blood roaring between my ears, I sprinted forward. The chilly drizzle dampened my hair and clothes and found the exposed skin between my neck and collar. Twigs and rocks nicked my heels and stabbed my toes, but I hobbled forward. The other gate wasn't far. Once I got to the village wall...

The realization froze me on the spot.

I didn't have keys. Not for the gate. Not for the store. Cyrus had them.

Heart pounding as I reorganized my mistake, I stood at the center of the path, torn between pushing forward and heading back. Neither was going to save me but if I went back, maybe I could hide somewhere on the grounds until morning.

It looked like my best option when a sway of light penetrated the dark. It bobbed and shook, growing larger until it was directly ahead.

"Naya!"

Any other time, Thoran's voice would have sent me straight into his arms. Only this time, I was whipping around and racing in the opposite direction.

"Naya!"

I screamed, but he was on me too fast, tackling us both to the ground in a heap of soggy clothes and mud. His weight dropped over me, pinning me on my back, wrestling my arms over my head.

"No! No, please! Please, don't!" I wept. Sobbed as I fought with everything in me to escape him.

Thoran never gave an inch. His hold tightened as rain dripped off his hair and onto my face in cool droplets. But it was his eyes that cut deep into my chest. Even in the halo of light cast from somewhere on my right, illuminating only half of our faces, the gold was practically swallowed up by the darkness of his pupils as he stared down at me with fury and something I didn't fully understand beyond my own rage and pain.

"Why?" he growled back, ignoring my pleas. "Why did you run?"

"Because you're a liar!" I screamed at him in between sobs. "I trusted you! I thought you ... I thought ... why? Why would you do something so cruel?"

His teeth bared white against the darkness. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Get off me!" I snarled back, twisting my face away.

He shackled my wrists with one hand. The other clamped down on my jaw, forcing me to look at him. "Not until you fucking tell me what the hell you were thinking. You could have fucking died, Naya! You could have broken your fucking neck."

I bared my own teeth. "I would rather die than let you give me back to him. I would rather rot in the ground."

He blinked damp lashes. "Give you ... what are you talking about? Why would I...?" he trailed off as something seemed to register. "Brixton? Why the fuck would I let that piece of shit take you? Why...? Back?" I saw the moment it registered, and his chest hitched with his sharp inhalation of air. "He's the guy? The one you're running from?" I could see him putting all the pieces together as if for the first time. "Naya Blackwell. Fuck. The invitation."

I stared up at him, waiting, watching as he realized all the things that had been in front of him from the beginning.

"You really didn't know?"

There was murder and fury behind his eyes when they found mine again. "How would I? I barely know the fucker and the two times we met, I regretted every minute."

Exhausted from the run and the emotional turmoil rendering my limbs useless, I stared up into the face of the man I loved with every piece of my broken heart, refusing to submit so easily.

"I heard you," I threw back. "I heard you tell him you were going to give me to him tomorrow."

"The hell I fucking was!" he thundered. "I had a shipment for him, and I wasn't even going to the drop off."

I looked at him. Really looked. Even in the shadows, his face was a mask of hurt, confusion, and rage. But beneath all that was fear.

"You said you were taking me somewhere tomorrow," I reminded him.

"To dinner like a normal fucking couple," he shot back. "I thought it would be a nice change to have an evening alone outside the bedroom."

My pathetic little heart fluttered, so desperate to believe him.

"You sent Vance to bring me down," I reminded him and my weak heart.

He exhaled a growl. "We were going for our walk, Naya. I was telling him to let you know I was ready when you were."

I searched his eyes for even a hint of a lie, but all I saw was the fire and pain.

"Do you mean it?"

There was nothing gentle about the attack of his mouth over mine. The hard grind of his fingers into my jaw, forcing me to take it. The light dipped away, folding his murderous glower behind shadows, giving him privacy to punish me the only way he could without actually strangling me.

He tore into me with no mercy. No restraint. He consumed and devoured every whimper until I was gasping and struggling. Only when I was certain I would pass out did he free the air back into my lungs with a jerk of his head.

"You're my wife. I fucking love you," he snarled against my bruised and panting mouth. "I love you so much it hurts. Do you actually think I would ever let another man have you? I would kill him. I would skin him alive and hang his body off the fucking roof. You're mine, Naya. Fucking mine."

I had no recollection of my fingers finding his hair, or that he'd released my hands, but I pulled him back to me. Relief a tight chokehold on my chest.

"Promise? Promise me," I begged around the hot tears mixing with the rain. "Promise me."

"I'm never letting you go, Naya. You're fucking mine until the day I fucking die. Even then. Mine." His words reverberated with a primal weight that crashed into me. "And now that I know the bastard who hurt you, I'm going to make it my life's purpose to destroy everything he's ever loved."