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Jesse flicked off the flashlight, and the rasps of our breaths clotted the sudden darkness. My eyes adjusted, squinting at the window and whatever stood on the other side.

Dimly backlit by the moon, a human form took shape on the porch. Bony shoulders, stringy hair, and cavernous stare of vacancy peered back through the crisscross of table legs.

Unless Michio had lost a foot of height, it wasn’t him. The icy tremors inside me agreed. My entire body throbbed with gnawing prickles, growing colder by the second in my aching need to reach this creature.

Because it wasn’t just any creature. It was exactly what I’d been searching for, and it was here, not because I found it. It found me.

My heart kicked up. “It’s a nymph.”

Were there more? I’d heard multiple scratching sounds, hadn’t I?

I wrestled free of Roark’s hold and leapt from the couch, headed for the window. “There’s a nymph on our fucking doorstep.”

I couldn’t believe it, even though every twitch and pinch inside me said it was true.

Jesse grabbed my arm and yanked me backward. “Where the hell are you going?”

The tapping against glass grew louder, more urgent. Blood barreled through my veins, rushing toward my heart and chilling my extremities. Go to it. Go to it. Go to it.

Why was I panicking? Or was the nymph projecting its panic onto me?

What if it ran before I could remove all the boards? It needed my blood, and my body knew this, every inch of me attuned to its movements, heartbeat, and sentience.

I could feel the glass beneath its talons, hear the stirring in the woods behind its body, and smell my blood through its nostrils. The scent rolling into the nymph’s lungs was so heady and intoxicating I let out a cry of anguish.

It cried with me, and the charge of its wail punched me in the chest. I needed to help the poor creature.

There was no holding back. Urgency heated my muscles as I twisted my arm from Jesse’s grasp and ran toward the window. “Go upstairs. Wait there.”

They would be safe upstairs. I’d be able to focus.

I slammed into a massive chest and bit my lip from the impact, tasting blood.

“You’re out your fecking mind.” Roark lifted me, his arms like metal bars at my back.

My feet lost purchase on the floor as he hauled me against his chest. I pushed and writhed, availing zero wiggle room in the iron cage of his arms.

“Goddammit, let go.” I kicked at his legs and twisted my arms, the balls-out effort producing a massive ache in my head.

He dragged me to the rear of the house, and with each step away from the window, my struggle become more crazed, desperate, and fucking painful. I gouged skin with my fingernails, lifted my knees to hit and slow him down, and my teeth found the fleshy part of his shoulder.

“Jesus suffering fuck!” Roark pinned my hands at my back, his size and strength overpowering me. “I’ll give ye a clatter in the hole if ye bite me again, ye disagreeable woman.”

“You don’t understand.” I strained my neck, trying and failing to see the face in the window. Was the nymph still there? It was too dark, and the agonizing imperative to let the creature in was fucking with my head.

But I could sense it. Not just the nymph. My insides caught fire, thrashing with electrical impulses. More nymphs? Aphids?

“I have to help it.” My stomach roiled, activating my gag reflex with the sudden urge to throw up my guts.

I swallowed repeatedly, breathing through it, and managed to hold down the stomach acid, all while trying to free my hands and reach my toes to the floor.

Trapped. Confined. My pulse went ballistic, and my breaths wheezed in my chest. “Put me down. Put me down. Please, Roark. Fucking let go!”

A hand gripped my chin, and the dark outline of Jesse’s messy hair filled my view.

“What’s wrong with her?” His voice chafed across my face, pissing me off.

Somewhere around Jesse’s feet, Darwin was circling, scratching his nails across the floor as he shuffled, trying to get to me.

“There’s nothing wrong with me.” I bucked my hips, going nowhere, pinned between two walls of muscle. “I just need…I need to—”

“To do what?” Jesse released my chin, only to grab my hair and yank my head back. “You gonna run out there and what? Let the nymph bite you? Is that your plan?”

I didn’t have a plan, but that was a great idea. It would take too long to draw my blood and load the tranquilizer gun. If it bit me, it would consume the cure, and the godawful ache bludgeoning my organs would stop.

Fuck, the pressure inside me was more than I could bear. Endless, stabbing, unbearable torture.

“It can bite me. I’m immune.” I kicked out a bare foot and collided with Roark’s shin, causing both of us to grunt. “You’re not immune. Take your asses upstairs.”