Page 94 of Stalked By Seduction and Shadows

Then him commanding me, hurting me, and treating me like I was his property.

“Yes?”

Tera brushed her full, curly black hair behind her broad shoulders. “Well, that was convincing.”

“How does he make you feel?”

I wasn’t here anymore. I was with him, the ruler of my dreams, the monster who held me so tightly I feared he might never let me go.

“Like I’m being consumed,” I said, the truth scraping through my throat even as my cheeks burned and skin itched. “I don’t trust him. It’s all too much, too fast. I know he’s an immortal vampire who has fought a war, who rules an entire clan, an entire city, with an iron fist. But it feels like we know each other. It feels like something so much more. I’m trapped and powerless, and yet I don’t want to stop. I can’t stop.”

Snow reached for my hand. “He’s love bombing you, Scar. You are in danger. All of my witchy intuition is certain that what you are describing is not healthy. I love you and I’m worried about you.”

“My witchy intuition agrees with that assessment,” Eli said as the others nodded.

“You’re off tonight too, right?” Snow asked.

I nodded. My head was spinning in circles, searching for the truth in this mess of feelings, foreign and powerful.

Rune was everywhere. Inescapable and anchored into every aspect of my life as if he really had fed me his blood. Even the fact that Snow and I had the exact same shift schedule had to have been his doing. It wasn’t like Seraph gave a shit that we were friends who would want to spend time together.

But Rune cared. Even if I wanted to believe that he didn’t. To cling to denial just like he’d said.

Snow continued, snapping me out of my thoughts. “A group of us are doing witchy shenanigans in the forest out by the firebird stables. You should join us.”

44

SCARLETT

The moon was nearly full tonight, lighting up the grove with the help of sparkling witch lights floating through the tangle of tree branches. I was in a circle of mostly witches, with a few shifters. Tonight, we honored Selena, from whom all witches and shifters descended, goddess of the moon, the arts, mortal magick, and the natural world.

“Woah,” I said, as a surge of magick rippled out through the space when one of the witches began to chant.

“You can sense magick?” Snow asked, low to my ear.

Someone began to play the violin, and I smiled. I tilted my head toward her. “Yep. Always have.”

She cocked her head at me. “That’s a rare talent for a human to be born with.”

Eli narrowed his eyes, something indiscernible flashing in them before Tera pulled him up to dance with her.

Snow reached for my hands next. For one of the first times since I was a young child dancing with my mother, I moved to the swelling melody of the violin and the beat of witches’ claps.

When I twirled and stared up at the stars, I thought of Rune’s arrogant smile. And when power rushed over my skin, charged with Selena’s blessing, I thought of his crawling shadows—the backdrop of deep space on which the cosmos was painted.

“Selena, watch over your children,” Snow said, raising a rose quartz rod into the air as we both stopped twirling, facing each other. “And watch over Helia’s too.”

I brushed my wild hair behind my ears.

“Heal us with your light. Let us be conduits for your magick and splendor.”

I lost myself in the waves of magick flowing all around us, Snow’s words digging into my throat and pulling, the quartz rod carving out a psychic blockage.

The collective desire of these mortals was so pure it melted me. For healing, community, and a peaceful, better world. It was nothing like the energy of Odessa, or of the crowd of protesters. But just as I felt when I was a part of that angry mob, I saw myself in the swell of yearning. I wanted them to have everything they wanted, as much as I craved a beautiful life for myself.

The violin pierced through the autumn air as this strange sensation fell over me. All of my inhibitions fell away, and my unconscious sea of suppressed feelings and wants rose to the surface and poured out of me.

Our desires were a song, broadcasting from my lips and into the heavens with a magickal charge of its own. My eyes closed, falling under this formless push and pull.

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