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I barely make out his words before I feel his hand tightening harder around my neck. The world tunnels. My feet scramble for footing as my spine grates against rough bark, and I choke on air that doesn’t come. My throat is too tight, his grip too firm, precise, like he’s done this before.

“Ghost!” I wheeze, kicking, and grabbing at his wrist so frantically that one of his cord bracelets snaps. “Stop!”

He doesn’t speak at first. Just stands there, looming, a full foot taller than me, literally choking me. He raises the camera in his other hand—the red light blinking—and pans it over my face.

This went from ghost hunting to snuff film real fast. I just know it will be a hit on the dark web… Oh dear God, he’s going to kill me.

“For a second, I hoped it wouldn’t have to come to this,” he adds. He doesn’t sound angry. It’s worse. He’s poised. Controlled. Like he’s making a documentary about how he plans to tear me apart.

I can’t breathe. My stomach twists so violently that I think I might throw up. My entire body goes ice cold, like my blood is backing away from my skin.

He releases me right before I pass out, and my knees nearly buckle as I desperately gasp for air.

Even worse comes next.

Slowly, he pulls a knife from underneath his hoodie.

Long. Clean. Sharp.

I freeze.

He holds it up—not to stab, not yet—but to let me see it. Let me understand.

He steps closer and cages me against the tree again, then the blade touches my cheek. I flinch, but he doesn’t cut. Just lets it trail like a lover’s caress of steel. Down my face. Over my throat.

My pulse pounds like war drums. My legs tremble under me, and still I can’t move. My voice fails. My thoughts scatter.

He leans in, pressing the smooth mask against my temple and inhales. “Fuck,” he whispers. “Fear smells incredible on you, little bunny.”

“Why are you doing this?” I manage to croak, voice shaking as badly as my limbs.

“Why?” he echoes, the dead calm in his voice bordering on unhinged now. Then he erupts, “Because you broke my fucking heart, you traitorous bitch!”

I can’t believe what’s happening…

He’s my Ghost…

This can’t be real…

“Please,” I whimper, voice shattered. “Please, stop…”

“Even your begging sounds like a lie.” He tilts the knife and presses it harder under my jaw. Not enough to break skin. Just enough to tell me he could. “All you had to do was choose me. Just fucking choose me . But instead, you tossed me aside like garbage. And now look what you made me do!”

My body trembles. Tears sting at the corners of my eyes, but I don’t let them fall. I can’t. I don’t know what will make him snap worse.

He laughs. But there’s nothing human in it. It starts low and bitter, then rises into something ragged and cracked. “Oh, if it isn’t the consequences of your own actions, you selfish, spoiled brat.”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“Didn’t mean to what?” he hisses. “Lead me on? Toy with my feelings for your fucking entertainment? Make me your little fucking joke?!” His voice cracks. Just for a second.

And then it’s gone, replaced by something cold. Something final. “You used me. And that’s okay, Bunny. Because now I get to use you in return.”

A fresh wave of panic chokes me. The fog thickens around us, swallowing sound. My heartbeat feels like it’s pounding in my ears loud enough to summon monsters from the trees.

But isn’t the real monster standing right in front of me? A man in the woods…

A man who perhaps loved me a little too much.

He drags the tip of the knife down my bruised throat, not slicing, just gliding—threatening.

My breath shakes violently. “Ghost, this isn’t you.”

“No,” he breathes, almost reverently, “this is me. The side of me you’ve always pretended not to see. The one you flirted with and ran from. The one that fucking starved for you.”

He shifts even closer, his body pinning me down completely, the cool steel of the blade resting at the hollow of my throat.

“And you just loved playing innocent, didn’t you? Got the attention you needed to make you feel better about yourself, had your pussy soaking wet watching me lose my fucking mind over you, then left me high and dry to suffer.”

I shake my head fast, lips trembling. “I didn’t—I never wanted to hurt you, please…”

“Oh, shut up!” he growls. His voice drops, becomes cold and detached.

“You know, I actually tried . For the first time in my entire life. I fucking tried for you . I was patient. I waited. I was so fucking good for you. I held back the worst parts of me. And I really believed we could be something.”

He drags the blade across my collarbone, letting me feel the sting.

“But you played me,” he says, voice dangerously low. “Just like you played Dev before me. Just like you played sad little Nate. Just like you play with everyone. You get off on it, don’t you? Making people fall in love with you, then moving to a new target.”

“No,” I sob. “No, that’s not true—”

“Oh, but it is.” His voice drops to a chilling whisper, “I should’ve fucked you on New Year’s Eve when you were passed out in my hotel bed.

Maybe then I would’ve gotten you out of my system.

Just taken what I wanted and walked away.

One and done, quick and easy.” The blade presses harder into my skin, and I can feel the blood welling up.

“I hate that I didn’t. Because that’s where I went wrong.

You got so fucking deep under my skin. You poisoned me.

Consumed my every thought. My every dream. I breathed you. I let you matter.”

My heart shatters into a million tiny pieces. “I felt that, too!” I cry out.

“Liar!” he yells, and there’s something… unnatural in his voice, and I’m scared for my life.

“Please, you have to believe me! I was just afraid!” I choke on my tears. “Because we were friends! And things got too intense, and I knew if I messed it up, you’d be gone forever. But I couldn’t lose you! I—I love you. You don’t need to do this. Ghost, I’m in love with you…”

The mask tilts slightly. He goes still. The silence drapes over the forest like a death shroud.

“See,” his voice is barely audible now, “I want to believe you…” The knife kisses my skin again. It slides over the thin line of blood he already drew and traces a new path—lazy, like he’s painting with it. “But I just can’t,” he adds, emotionless, measured.

Then, a scream rips through the woods.

Not his.

Not mine .

But distant and bloody, torn from someone’s lungs like they didn’t want to give them up. Familiar.

“Time to say goodbye to your friends,” he murmurs, almost entertained.

Before I can even grasp what he just said, chaos erupts.

Human screams reverberate through the trees around us. All too familiar.

My blood turns to ice.

Oh God, please, no.

I want to believe Kendra, Nate, and Dev are just that good at faking content. But my subconscious already knows.

There’s something else there. Not human, not animal, but something worse. Something wrong . It snarls in the trees—a noise I can’t name, something that doesn’t belong on Earth.

More screaming, then a brutal cacophony of crunching and wet tearing sounds. Bones breaking. Gurgling cries. Begging cut off mid-sentence. The sickening pop. A primal howl, too unnatural to belong to a wolf. I can almost smell the blood, metallic and hot and final.

Ghost doesn’t even flinch. He just tilts his head, listening, savoring. Like he’s living for this moment.

My stomach lurches as tears spill down my cheeks, and I can’t stop shaking. My heart is thrashing like it’s trying to shatter through my ribs and flee.

I don’t know what’s happening.

I don’t know why it’s happening.

But he clearly does.

I get hysterical and jerk against him, trying to push him out of my way. “Let me go! Please, we have to help them!”

But he doesn’t budge. “Help who? Not even a single tooth of them remains. Because of you.” His voice is too calm, too cold.

A mewl chokes out of me. My knees give up under me, but he holds me up, body pinning me with impossible strength. I can’t move. I can’t even think straight.

“Wha-what did you do?!”

“I let the woods eat,” he whispers, like it’s holy.

My eyes flood. My stomach clenches. Terror scrapes up my throat and spills out in ugly sobs.

He tilts his head slowly like he's watching me die from the inside. Like the sight delights him. “You look so fucking pretty when you cry,” he says. “When I take everything you love from you. When there’s nothing left for you to hold on to. No one left to save you. Just me, taking what’s mine.”

The tears blur everything, but I still see the knife. Still feel it as he lowers it. Down. Across my chest. Not cutting. Not yet. Just… exploring. My breath catches. My skin prickles. He presses the edge lightly over the swell of my breast, watching the way the cool metal makes me jittery.

“You're trembling,” he murmurs. “But not from just fear, are you?”

I choke on a sob. Shake my head. Try to shrink from him, even as my body betrays me, reacting to the cold, the adrenaline, the impossible intimacy of pain and dread and his goddamn voice in my ear.

Heat pools low in my belly, no matter how hard I fight against it, making me sick.

The knife slides lower as he slips the blade under the center of my bustier, slicing downward in one smooth motion. The fabric parts with a whisper, air hitting my bare skin as the corset falls open. My breasts spill free, nipples pebbling instantly under his gaze.

I gasp, arms instinctively trying to cover myself, but he nudges my wrist with the edge of the knife, ordering my hands away.

“Don’t,” he growls. “Don’t hide from me now.”

I whimper as fresh tears distort my vision. The fabric falls away completely, exposing my jutting tits to the camera that’s still recording.

He drags the flat of the knife over the side of my breast. Just a touch. Just enough to leave a chill trail that makes me want to scream.