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“Yeah, I figured. Some kind of kink, right?” He eyes me. “You like watching.”

“I...” The lump in my throat makes it painful to swallow. “I can’t help it. And it’s safer this way. For all of us.”

Every step we take toward the house requires enormous strength not to turn around and go back to the cabin to take what belongs to me. To leave her with a mark inside, not just out.

“She’s made for it,” he goes on, low now, confident. “You know that. For the pain and the pleasure. You saw it when she came apart. That wasn’t fear. That was surrender. Real, dirty surrender.”

My jaw tightens. That’s what’s eating me. Not that it happened–but that Iwantit again. That I want her crying, wrecked, my name in her throat. That I’m fucking mad I held back. I clench my hands.

“She’s not going anywhere,” he reminds me. “Plenty of time.”

“Ares!Komm!” I shout as we reach the house, its colored-glass windows and peaked roof looming ahead.

Graves meets us at the doorway. “The King asked me to bring some information to your quarters. He said, and I quote, ‘Now that the wedding is over, it’s time to stop fucking around and get to work.’” His lips quirk. “Everything is on the table in the den.”

After Graves walks off, DK says, “Damn, I guess the King was right. Samhain is over.”

Inside, Ares picks up his bone and jumps up on the cracked leather couch. On the game table is the stack of paperwork Graves left us, and it only takes a moment to realize it’s information on the missing girls.

“I’ve been working on something.” I walk into our bedroom and grab the folded-up map out of my backpack. “I took all the information I got from my radio show and started tracking it.” Spreading the map out on the table, I point out the key. “The red dots are for hard evidence,” he says. “The blue circles are for suspicious activity that we need to follow up on. The Xs mark every place a girl was last seen alive.”

DK flips through a file. “These have all the details on the missing girls, including things like name, date, age, class schedule, and medical records. I don’t even want to know how he got those.”

The more we study it, the more obvious it becomes that everything circles back to the same thing the Kings, the police and Feds have had all along: nothing.

“Does this look like a sort of straight line to you?” DK asks, tracing a line down the map with his finger between two of the dots. “Stella was last seen here.” He points to one spot. “And Arianette was seen here.”

I lean over and study the map. “Close enough. Except the university is in the middle.”

Something pings in my mind, and I flip through the papers, pulling out a hand-drawn schematic of the tunnel system. It’s crudely drawn and the King implied that not all of it is on official maps. “We’ve got the crypts, an underground rail, emergency systems and campus facilities. Some seem to connect and others don’t.”

DK sits back and runs his hand through his hair. “Nothing indicates that these are linked in any way either.”

“Since when do the powers that be cooperate in Forsyth?”

“Any word on Sofia?” he asks, toying with his eyebrow piercing.

"Last I heard the Dukes had her in a safe spot in the West End and someone goes with her back and forth to campus.” I drop a file on the table and sigh. “I can check in on her at my next class, see if anything suspicious has come up.”

DK grunts. "At the reception Sy asked me again about the hypnotism shit. I promised we’d bring her by sometime soon.”

Hunter gives me a skeptical look. "You think she's ready?"

"No," he grins, “but since when does the Baroness get to decide when she’s ready?"

“Now?” I ask, partially because I want to get back to the cabin. There’s an itch under my skin, the urge to see her and maybe finish what I didn’t earlier.

“Eh, let's give her a bit to rest and clean up,” he says, slinking back in his chair. “But after that, it’s like the King said, it’s back to business.”

Ares trotsbeside me as we head back through the trees. Sun’s starting to dip, slicing orange through the thinning canopy. The path is quiet. Too quiet. Even DK notices.

“Fuck, it’s kind of creepy out here.” He glances over his shoulders. “I’ve heard that bobcats live in this area.”

“You ever see one?” I ask.

“No, but I came upon a mother black bear and her cubs when I was in the wilderness program.” He zips up his jacket. “Just about shit myself.”

I laugh, thinking about him in a state of panic. He’s always so even-tempered, and fearless. But I’ve seen the scar on his throat. That shit will change a person.