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Sloan’s wounds had healed the way they should, but the remnants of our disastrous escape stayed vividly on his light skin. Thankfully, none of them sung of pain or injury.

A small mercy.

The Brit’s enigmatic blue irises gleamed like starlight in dirt though, if I was honest. They were the first thing I saw any time I looked at the Hunter. And really, my favorite part of his face. Something about the color lured my gaze any time I so much as glanced Sloan’s direction. But, to my unending amusement, Sloan’s usually perfectly kempt hair was just short of total anarchy.

Think post-explosion and you’d know what I meant.

Without a serious shower and hardcore hairbrush molded from metal while employing the strength of Zeus, Sloan’s hair situation was utterly hopeless. It was honestly the most endearing part of our situation because I genuinely thought the dude was incapable of flaw. But his hair begged to differ, and this girl never wished so hard for the opportunity to take a picture with the phone I left back alongside all our weapons and shit.

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black, though.

My clothes were in tatters, and my skin bore the marks of a hasty escape through dirt and forest. The hole from where Eros stabbed me with a thick arrow had further ripped in my hurry to get away. I looked like a victim, and it was a hard pill to swallow when I realized I’d nearly been one. But really, it was a wonder how we’d gone completely unnoticed by the general public on our way to the parking lot.

Chalk it up to the weird things people did forTikToks.

Sloan’s apparent recovery was the small relief I took out of an overall shit situation as we snuck glances at couples walking to and from their parked cars, ignorant of our pointed stares.

“This has potential to be a trash fire,” I whispered, eyes trailing one such victim, whose clothes I could probably fit into. Sadly, her companion was a little too meaty around the middle to give my lithe, incredibly fit partner the same advantage.

Sloan’s low hum met my ears. “We don’t really have the option to be picky. We can’t waste any more time here, so you’re probably right.”

He eyed the same couple, then pulled a cute, all-pink sewing kit from the inside of his jacket. “We’re about to goProject Runwayon these bitches,” came the lethal Hunter’s surprising proclamation, and I had to smack a hand over my mouth to keep from outright cackling.

Once the couple was isolated from the rest, we moved. It was a mad-dash to overwhelm them with the potent sleeping powder, then do the swap.

I didn’t think about how I was essentially naked in front of a man, who only a few hours before, kissed me in front of a man I was getting down and dirty with. Or the fact that said kiss was life-altering and definitely one I wanted to repeat. To be honest, I didn’t have the headspace to pretend to be modest. A Hunter did what a Hunter had to do to get the fuck out of a sticky situation, and that was what getting naked in front of Sloan inevitably amounted to.

When we finished, both of our victims looked like they’d been attacked. The woman’s shiny blonde hair was curtaining her face from view, her clothes baring parts of her legs and chest. The man was slumped over, pants halfway up his legs, shirt thrown haphazardly over his chest because it no doubt didn’t fit. The sight of them was a startling display of a couple preyed upon, and the conclusions human detectives would draw from it were limitless.

It wasn’t my proudest moment.

Sloan shot a glance over his shoulder before tucking a huge wad of money into the slumped over man’s hand. “Sorry,” he whispered to the unconscious couple before standing and taking my hand inside his. “Let’s go.”

The warmth of the Brit’s hand surprised me enough to make my brain slow to respond—and my legs even slower. Really, it was all just one big shitshow as I failed to walk altogether. No surprise, I earned myself a very curious glance from the man attempting to lead me away, whose beauty couldn’t be drowned out by an oversized Hawaiian shirt and poorly tailored pair of pants. Or a barely tamed monster frizz of a hair situation.

It was adorable to watch Sloan curse and fail to tailor the pair of pants he stole, while swiping down his hair a hundred times, often worsening the situation rather than fixing it.

I expected him to be perfect at everything he did. I mean, the dude carried a sewing kit in his pocket like he was some kind of designer and not a deadly vampire hunter. Like he knew how to use it when clearly he did not. It was by far the oddest thing I’d learned about him, but it was also now my most favorite.

Even Sloan wasn’t perfect. Which meant there was maybe hope for me, assuming we made it out of this day alive.

Phillip.

I closed my eyes, the Austrian’s emotionless face burned into my retinas. It killed me that the last time I saw him was at the moment I kissed another man.

Guilt, my old friend.

I swallowed around the forming lump in my throat, gaze stolen by another man’s hand over mine. And when I lifted my eyes, a set of pale blue ones stared back.

“You did the right thing,” Sloan whispered huskily, his thumb gently caressing the top of my hand. “Don’t let it stop you. Keep moving.”

He’d never know how truly ironic his words were in that moment, and how little they did to ease the guilt inside my heart. But now wasn’t the time for regrets or guilt.

Licking my lips, I looked over my shoulder to where the sun finally sunk behind endless hills. “Yeah.”

*

SOMEHOW, WE MADE ITback to the US, and I managed not to be as awkward around Sloan as I worried I would be. Granted, Sloan was easy conversation and kept me talking as if he specialized in interrogation. To his credit, he very well could have. Because it wouldn’t be far from the necessary Hunter training we underwent every damn day of our godforsaken lives.