Page 119 of Hunted By Fae

Silence is my answer.

Maybe I’m foolish enough to hope he hasn’t determined my exact location in the abandoned brewery, or he’ll give up and wander off. Maybe it’s that the fear won’t let me speak, just as it doesn’t let me move from my curled-up position.

Whatever it is, Dare accepts that no answer will come—and he moves. The creaking of floorboards growls outside like a beast’s warning.

Thud,

thud,

thud.

My breath bolts to my chest.

Stuck under this bench in the brewery, the register above me, all I can do is brace myself for him to punch his fist through the wooden door that’s rotted and frosted.

He could rip that door off its rusty hinges without breaking a sweat… but no fist splinters the wood.

All I hear is my blood rushing through my eardrums like river rapids, and it faintly reminds me of when I was a youngling and I would duck underwater too long to see if my mother would notice, think I was drowning, and would save me.

She never did.

She would only ever look away with a faint touch of exasperation on her sharp face.

Trapped in my boots, my toes curl as the tingle of dreadful anticipation creeps through me.

Silent tears are streaming down my cheeks.

Through the thin wooden door, the dark fae sighs a soft sound that, in the dead of the silence, I hear as though it is right at my ear. “You are right, Bee.”

The sound of my name on his lover’s tongue is enough to flush my cheeks hot, and I wonder if this is one of his many tactics that work for him, how easily he can lure a stupider human into his open arms—making it all so easyfor him to snap her neck like a twig, then brush a kiss over her cold, dead lips.

“What sort of male would I be if I let you come to me? I should be the one to bring your gift to you.”

Horror slackens my face.

Slowly, I lean forward and press my hands onto the sticky floor. I slip into a crouch and crane my neck to peer around the bar.

The dread that fills my eyes is aimed at the grimy window stretching up the wall—

I don’t get a moment to shield myself before the single panel of murky glass shatters like a fucking glitter bomb.

A scream catches in my throat.

I throw myself to the ground. Arms twisted, my hands slap to the back of my head.

The glass shards rain down on me, a wretched burst of confetti made from cuts and bites.

Something hits the ground with a thud before a wretched sticky sound follows it.

Distantly, amongst the panic dizzying me, I think of a muddy bowling ball being thrown through the window and landing just in front of me.

Cringed against the glass settled all over me, I brace my arm against my face and look back at the window.

I blink through the clouds of dust between me and the panel where the window was just moments ago—

But he isn’t there.

I expected him to be standing there, out on the porch, that wicked and lethal smile of his fixed on me; or even stepping into the brewery, twirling a dagger in his hand.