Page 65 of Cursed

“Let’s see how you like being watched,” I mutter, cracking my knuckles.

I close the browser and open my terminal. This is my world. Code. Systems. Digital fortresses that all have weaknesses if youknow where to look. I start with a basic probe of his home network.

It takes forty minutes of concentrated work, but I’m finally in. My heartbeat quickens as I navigate through Landon’s files. Most are encrypted, but a folder labeled simplyTherapystands out. No encryption. Like he wants someone to find it.

I click.

Video files. Dozens of them, named only with dates. My finger hovers over the trackpad before selecting one from six months ago.

The screen fills with a stark white room. A woman lies strapped to a table, whimpering. Landon enters the frame, wearing his white mask.

“This will hurt,” he says flatly, producing a small knife.

I should close it. I should shut down the computer and run. But I don’t.

The woman screams as Landon carefully carves intricate patterns into her skin. Blood wells up, running in rivulets across her pale flesh. He works methodically, like an artist, his breathing steady while hers comes in ragged gasps.

My stomach churns with revulsion, but something else stirs inside me, too. A sick, twisting heat that makes me press my thighs together. The woman’s eyes roll back as Landon continues his work, her body now decorated with bloody designs.

“Perfect,” he whispers, running his fingers through the crimson trails.

The woman barely moves now, barely conscious from pain and blood loss. Landon begins unbuckling his belt, and I slam the laptop shut, my hands shaking.

I rush to the bathroom and splash cold water on my face, avoiding my reflection. I’m disgusted—not just with him, butwith myself. With the shameful throb between my legs that persists despite the horror I’ve witnessed.

What kind of monster am I, to feel arousal watching that?

I grip the edge of the sink, my knuckles turning white. The truth is a hard pill to swallow—it wasn’t simply the horror of what I saw that made me slam the laptop shut. It was jealousy, burning through my veins.

The thought of Landon touching another woman, marking another woman, being inside another woman... it makes me want to scream. To break things. To find that woman and?—

I catch my own eyes in the mirror and don’t recognize the person staring back.

What have I become?

I slide down to the bathroom floor, hugging my knees to my chest. This isn’t me. This isn’t who I was before all this. Before him.

“I was already broken,” I whisper to the empty bathroom.

The assault years ago had left cracks in my foundation—fault lines running through every intimate moment since. But I’d managed. I’d built walls around those broken pieces, kept myself functioning.

Landon didn’t just break through those walls. He demolished them. He found every fractured piece of me and pried them further apart until there was nothing left but rubble.

And the worst part? I let him. I craved it. I’m still craving it.

I press my forehead against my knees, my body shaking. The Hunt was supposed to be an experience—a wild departure from my careful life. Instead, it’s revealed a truth I’ve been hiding from myself: I want to be owned. Possessed. Ruined for anyone else.

Just like he promised.

And now I’m jealous of a woman he carved up like a fucking pig. A woman he hurt far worse than he hurt me.

What does that make me?

28

LANDON

Twenty-five hours. One hour after the time when I could have claimed her again.