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She should be afraid.

She should be sobbing. Writhing. Trembling with the feel of death pressing like frost along her spine. That’s how it always begins. Always.

But tonight—she moaned.

A low sound. Soft. Sinful. Not from terror.

From want.

I watched her body arch as the shadows caressed her skin and instead of screaming—she shivered like she liked it.

And the taste of that—raw, alive—sank deeper than any dying breath.

The echo of it still clings to me, clotted between my ribs like rot I can’t scrape off.

I pace the edge of the veil, where the worlds blur and bleed. Creek Haven. This cursed town where everything pulses wrong.

Here, the tether pulls tighter.

The Evergloom reaches for her like a greedy thing. It knows her. I can feel it—gnarled roots deep in the dark groaning for her. The soil already whispering her name. The realm wants her.

But I want her first.

Not her soul. Not her death.

Her.

I don’t understand it.

Fear has always been my sustenance. My purpose. The final gasp. The marrow-aching dread that fills a human just before the end—that’s what I was made for. That last beat before nothing.

But Parker…

She doesn’t end.

She resists. She responds .

That one gasp of pleasure… it lingers longer in my mind than her cries.

Why?

Something is wrong.

Or maybe…

Something is changing.

In her. In me.

I crave her fear—yes. But more than that, I crave the way her desire blooms beneath it. A flush beneath the frost. A heat that tastes like defiance.

She wants me.

Not fully. Not willingly. But enough that the bond tastes different now.

Wilder. Stronger.

Wrong.

I wasn’t made to want this. I am death. I am the ending. The finale.

And yet—I see her breathless in bed and think not of taking her soul, but of marking her skin. I see her flush and think not of fear, but of claiming what’s mine. I see her lips part and think not of screams—but of moans.

This is not who I am. It shouldn’t be. And yet when the Evergloom whispers for her, when it sings her name in broken breath beneath the trees...

I find myself whispering, too.

Not for her death. Not for her terror.

For her.

For the sound of her voice. For the heat of her lust. For the taste of her want.

Parker.

My Snow Pea.