Page 47 of Hymns of the Broken

“She doesn’t feel like yours. See you around, Hellcat.”

Jasper looks shocked, but he just stands there, watching Riot until he’s gone, his chest rising and falling like he’s holding himself together by sheer will. His eyes find mine, and there’s fire in them. Fire and something worse—something that makes my knees weak and my stomach twist like I’m already his, whether I fight it or not.

JASPER

I walk away.

I haveto walk away.

Because if I don’t, I’m going to rip his throat out with my fucking teeth in front of a crowd of screaming fans and flashing cameras.

My fists are clenched so tight that I swear I feel my nails break the skin, blood threatening to run from where they bite into my palms.

I move through the crowd like I’m stalking prey—because I am. Only I’m not hunting Riot. I’m hunting control.

But it’s already gone.

I stop near the side stage area, sucking in shallow breaths, trying to drag the flames in my chest back into a cage. But all I see when I close my eyes isher, that little smirk when Riot touched her cheek, and the way she laughed.

The sound of it cuts through me like a blade made of glass, jagged and cruel.

She’s mine.

She’s fucking mine.

I press the heels of my hands into my eyes and growl low under my breath, the sound guttural. “I’m losing it,” I say to no one. Or maybe to the devil sitting on my shoulder—hell, maybe that is me now—whispering what I already know.

“If I don’t have her soon…” My jaw cracks with the force of my teeth grinding. “…if she doesn’t fucking come to me willingly, I’m going to take what belongs to me and never give it back.”

My body moves before my mind even catches up. I turn and head back through the crowd. My eyes are locked onherlike a predator who’s already decided on dinner.

She’s with the guys. Laughing at something Ash says about a photo he’s looking at on her camera, tilting her head back just enough for the sun to catch on her black-and-teal hair. It’s an image that burns me alive.

She doesn’t see me until I’m there—fingers wrapping around her wrist firm enough that she knows this isn’t a suggestion. This isn’t a question.

Her eyes widen with shock, but she doesn’t resist.

She never really does.

I don’t say a fucking word.

I walk and she follows.

SAWYER

I don’t even remember telling my legs to move.

One second I’m joking with Ash, forcing myself to laugh like I’m not still burning from Jasper’s nuclear glare across the lot… and the next, his hand is on my wrist—hot, steady, unrelenting—and I’m following him.

Like a spell ignited the second his skin touched mine.

He doesn’t say a word.

Not once.

And somehow, that’s worse because silence with Jasper Reign is never empty.

We slip behind a barrier and down a narrow walkway near the stage crew entrance. Music still pulses through the air, faint and distorted, as if the world outside were miles away.