Page 111 of Claimed By the Mothman

He’s just in the kitchen,Nell told herself, trying to tamp down her rising alarm.He just stepped out. You’re overreacting.

But her breath became shallower, and the bond remained faint, like the sound of a radio played in a faraway room. With growing dread, Nell moved slowly to the kitchen.He wouldn’t have left, no, perhaps he went to pick up breakfast before—she pushed the thought away.

Hesitantly, she reached the threshold of the kitchen and paused, suddenly terrified to go in. Gulping, she peered inside and saw the half-empty fruit bowl, the mugs in the sink, a dish towel draped over the back of a chair. But her eyes flashed to the pantry door and—

—it wasn’t a pantry door anymore.

In place stood the Lustrum. Its red, lacquered surface shimmered in the low morning light, gleaming like a pool of blood that had been disturbed by a gust of wind. The doors throbbed, and the air shifted with it, becoming a low-pressure hush that pressed into her eardrums.

On the counter was a single folded note, with her name written on the front in tight, elegant script.

No.

Heart skidding sideways, Nell stepped forward slowly, keeping one eye on the Lustrum like it was a predator that might suddenly lunge. Its surface rippled again, like a muscle twitch in something vast and not entirely asleep.

Her fingers shook. She didn’t want to touch the note. Didn’t want to read the words she already knew were waiting, words she feared she already knew. Her hand closed around it anyway.

Pulse hammering in her throat, she slowly unfolded it.

My Nell, my beloved, my heart—

I cannot let you go into the Lustrum. I will not let it take you. I am going in your stead.

I pray to all the gods that will be enough to save you.

You are worth this and more. You are everything.

I love you, always, in this world and the next and all the others to come.

—Sig

The gasp that split from her was sharp and broken. “No,” she whispered, clutching the note to her chest as if she could suffocate the words written on it. “No, no,no.”

Panic radiated out from her core, burning along every nerve. She squeezed her eyes shut, bracing, reaching, concentrating on the bond. It was still there, but dim and distant…and just beyond the red doors that stood looming over her. The opal ring on her finger burned white-hot, tunneling up her.

Sig, curled around her, whispering the morning song of his people.

The moment their marks aligned. The bloom of his slit beneath her fingers, open and shining just for her.

His body inside hers, claiming and claimed.

His vow: I will walk with you into the Lustrum.

Through the flashes of him, she felt the thread of something else whispering, limning her memories with something harsher and older.

You were offered,it whispered.

You were taken.

The pattern is incomplete.

The building groaned beneath her feet and the floorboards creaked like vertebrae.

Fury rose in Nell’s chest.No.She would not let it end, not now, not like this. Last time he had protected her, had broken the pattern to lay claim. It was her turn, now.

The Lustrum loomed before her, its surface roiling, too dark, too deep, too aware. Like a wound that had become sentient.

She reached out and pressed her palm flat to the center of the door. As she watched, the opal ring’s light stuttered, shifted…and began pulsing at the same tempo as the doors