Page 25 of Unholy Bonds

That was our destiny. Four years. Tied together by a thread of fate that just couldn’t be untangled until one of us ended the other.

There wasn’t any way around or out of it.

“I’ll come for you, you bastard. You just wait for me. I’ll hunt you down and watch you bleed to your death. Maybe then, the demons will finally find peace”

The next evening after work, I sat in my car, staring at Ryden’s office building. I had no dead bodies I had to talk to today, so I decided I’d leave early and spend a few more minutes indulging in my new obsession.

Tapping my nails against the steering wheel, I watched as Ryden walked out of the building with a gorgeous woman who looked like she had just stepped out of the pages of Vogue. She was beautiful, and the way he smiled at her told me that this smile wasn’t a pretense.

“Who is she, Ryden Sinclair?” I whispered to myself as the woman said something, making him smile once again.

He was always smiling in the photos available on the internet, but that smile was different from this one. That smile was fake. He hated smiling for the pictures. He’d rather smile at them. Mock them with a sense of superiority, reveling in his secrets, jeering at them for being utter fools.

I didn’t have to search hard to find the woman. It was Natalia Porter. Ryden’s chief editor and co-worker. Maybe even more.

That could become a problem for what you’re planning.

If I want to do this, no one will be a problem.

He walked to his car, and she took her own. Hoping they weren’t going to the same location, I followed him.

He parked and stepped out. For a fleeting moment, his gaze drifted to the woods—the same woods where he chased me a few days ago. I still wondered why he spared me that night. It wasn’t merely because I caught him off guard. I was good, but not that good. He chose to let me go.

I hid in the shadows and watched as he walked toward his home. He opened the door and turned around as if he could hear my heart pounding in my throat. The man looked like a fucking angel against the backdrop of the setting sun and dancing shadows. Angel of Death. Attractive. Illegally so. His body was made to force a woman into committing sins she wouldn’t normally think of—even innocent women.

He walked in, quickly locking the door behind him.

“Who else knows your secret, or am I the only one?” I rubbed my chin as I continued to wait for that single curtain he would open exactly at seven forty. On the dot. Then he’d pour himself half a glass of red wine—I was sure it was an expensive one—and look down on the world from the top, his shirt unbuttoned, his sleeves rolled to his elbows, his raven hair messed up.

The curtain opened. My pulse raced when I saw he wasn’t wearing a shirt today. My mouth went dry as he stood there, enjoying his wine. My eyes lingered on the tattoos on his arm and his chest… and then he turned around, making me gasp. The detailed tattoo on his back made my heart skip a beat.

It was breathtaking and melancholic. Like beautifully broken poetry. Wings, half destroyed as though someone had brutally taken a saw to them, stretched from both sides of the scapula. Feathers, burning orange and gold at the edges, cascaded down his strong back in a sinuous trail.

Fuck.

The need for this man was burning so bright that I dreamed of him every night. In those dreams, he touched me in ways I wanted him to, tasting my desire for him, taking me to dark, deranged places.

Despite the longing to just march up to him and tell him what I was, who I was, I sat there in the comfort of my car, tapping my fingers against the steering wheel.

“You look like a mistake, Ryden,” I muttered under my breath. “But I know you won’t be the worst one I’ve made.”

Getting to know Ryden Sinclair, ripping off the masks he had kept in place… these new routines made me calm for a while, but when the demons woke up, thirsting for something else, I couldn’t ignore them anymore. It would be like claws against my skull, against my bones.

I didn’t know how to stop them, not completely. I had learned ways to put them to sleep for days, weeks, and months, but eventually, I knew they would always wake up. The respite would go away, and the voices would tear me from the inside out.

First, I’d hear the soft scratches, and feel the pressure until my whole body became burning with it. The need. Fire. Hunger.

The voice would start as a whisper until everything else was drowned out by the echoes of the screams in my head. Everything would be beyond my control by then. I had to give in. That was my only option. Only blood would help.

It’s time for your hunt.

I had to find Victor Bane and end him.

It is time.

11

WITH LOVE

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