Page 105 of Stalked By Seduction and Shadows

“Hmm,” Sadie said. “You know that most express far more human qualities than born.”

I’d only encountered a few succubi and incubi in my lifetime. They were well-glamoured, unable to discern from humans through beauty and allure alone. They died like their born brothers and sisters, though. Their screaming and begging were just as satisfying to my ears. But instead of feeding off blood, they fed off desire. Sex. Power. They’d been used over the centuries as crafty spies and double-agents, employed to make great men and women fall, much like Sadie once had.

Sadie shrugged. “There are ways of… identifying them. If you ever want to ensure this human woman who has you so tightly wound around her finger is, in fact, who she appears to be.”

I grit my teeth. “She’s not a succubus, Sadie. Though sometimes I wish she were. If it was all an illusion, at least I’d be able to snap out of it and regain my sanity.” Even as I said it, I recoiled from my own words, at the mere insinuation that Scarlett’s roots could be cut out of me and mine out of her.

“You must snap out of it either way,” Sadie hissed, going snakelike again as her power thickened the surrounding air.

My own shadows thrummed in an unconscious response.

“If you insist on taking a lover, projecting all of your core wounds onto her in a desperate attempt to gain catharsis and make sense of your unending existence, fine. Claim her as soon as you can, to avoid anything unpleasant happening. Enjoy her. Let her fill your void and hold all the weakness I couldn’t beat out of you. But do not let a human that likely won’t last the war distract you from maintaining everything we have built. Everything we will build.”

At the idea of Scarlett dying in the war, or before the war, my whole body froze, proving Sadie’s point. I ground my teeth, glaring out at the hills.

“I know what I was born to do. Nothing will ever change that.”

“No, nothing will. Including that sniveling rat, Durian. In one hundred years, we will look back at this time triumphantly, clinking drinks and gazing out at the same, unchanging sunset.”

I squashed down the unease churning in my gut, the pang of grief. I thought of conquest instead, everything I’d built and the untapped potential that lay on the horizon.

“In one hundred years, I want to see you with a whole army of subs. I’ve never wanted to see anything more.”

Sadie threw her head back, her magnetic laughter spilling out into the autumn air. “Goddess, no, Rune. What if they unionize? Elect alpha subs to lead the pack and represent their interests? What a headache.”

I shook my head, rubbing my grinning mouth as I watched her pretend to take me seriously.

Still, I saw the way Sadie’s cunning mind worked and worked, and I prayed it had moved on to considerations of war and far from her fears about Scarlett.

Fears that might haunt me, even if I knew they weren’t true.

49

SCARLETT

Iheld Isabella’s diary in my palms. It was a habit I’d picked up, triggered most often by guilt. If I had to psychoanalyze myself, I figured the compulsion came from the knowledge that Isabella’s words would reveal her cruelty and hatred in aching detail. If I were to read her innermost thoughts about me, then I’d likely break my lingering delusions that I could make her love me again. And then I wouldn’t have to feel so guilty doing all of these things I knew would send her into a fit of rage more violent than ever.

What I wore. What I talked about with Snow and the other witches. My job at Odessa, playing games with vampires. Worst of all, of course, my relationship with Rune.

Guilt was what drove me to feel the diary’s weight in my hands, to run my fingers over the spine. Guilt was also what kept the book firmly shut. That, and my unwillingness to tarnish my last thread of hope for a relationship with my only living family member. Did it even matter what Isabella had thought about me before? All of her cruel words and coldness?

When Rune saved her, she would be forever changed. It would be selfish of me to hold the past against her after everything she’d endured.

Another fear was that Rune would find the diary and read it. Because what if Isabella made such a strong case against me that Rune began to see what she saw inside of me? I shoved the diary back under the mattress, and I grabbed the notebook Rune had given me.

You don’t have to do this, Scarlett. You haven’t been claimed yet. You can still walk away.

I read the message five times before it faded away. I wasn’t sure why, but my predominant emotion after reading it was anger. Even if I knew Rune was just being reasonable. Unselfish. Attuned with my fears and hesitations.

But since when was Rune reasonable?

I’d come to learn that despite his perfectly controlled demeanor and shows of dominance, Rune might’ve lived with guilt too, however well hidden. Guilt for what he was doing to me, the desire he was stoking. Yet he didn’t stop. He reeled me in, pierced me with all of these hooks and pulled. Then he had the audacity to tell me I was free to tear them out of my skin and live without him?

I closed the notebook and paced around my apartment. The more we’d written to each other, the deeper and more undeniable my feelings had become. Rune had traveled everywhere, even to places in Ravenia that I’d only read about in stories as a child. Places I’d never dreamed I’d be able to see, locales I thought were mere myths. He wrote about his travels in these beautiful, descriptive sentences, inserting dry humor and dark satire that had me smiling and imagining his voice reading each note. He was a natural storyteller, making even the most mundane interactions with various characters sound like the most riveting, profound moments of his existence.

And he didn’t even see it. Yesterday, I’d remarked that it was a tragedy his notes to me disappeared after I read them.

Your words should be immortalized. I’d read them over and over. I’d never grow tired of your writing. You said you used to imagine yourself as the protagonists of all your favorite books, but Rune, you’ve become them. You’ve lived adventures that other novelists couldn’t even imagine.

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