Page 53 of Reaper's Pack

Naturally, I didn’t understand a word of it, given the lyrics were in Italian—Hazel confirmed when I asked, her grasp of the European tongues shaky but passable. But an opera wasn’t about a literal understanding of the words, rather the feeling invoked by the players. The score plucked at my heartstrings immediately. The flare of the costumes caught my eye, the whirl of the dancers stirring the beast within as I tracked them across the stage as a hunter tracks its prey.

Set pieces moved fluidly through the scenes, from the political pleas in the senate to the secret rendezvous of lovers in a midnight garden. Armies marched. Dogs bayed—real dogs on spiked leashes. Women wailed. The human spectators applauded throughout the first act, with each brief closing of the curtain, with each trail of the orchestra…

Magical.

Simply magical.

Perhaps an hour in, I finally tore myself away to whisper about the male lead to Hazel, that his vibrato was the best I’d heard in all the videos I had watched in secret, late at night while the pack slept.

Only the praise died in my throat when I found her crying. Not overtly weeping, of course. With her chin on her fist, her elbow on the chair’s armrest, she consumed the dramatic rise and fall of the scene before us intently, tears streaking down both cheeks.

Perhaps I too had succumbed to the performance, suddenly drunk on the music, because I couldn’t abide the tears this time. Couldn’t ignore them as I had when I first stalked her through Lunadell. They elicited something foreign in me, a defensive rush for her well-being. I had never defended anyone but Declan. Hellhounds had been beaten before my eyes, killed in old kennels, and I’d felt nothing but relief that it wasn’t me.

But her sorrow touched me.

Tormented me.

Set my body aflame and threatened to burn me alive in this very seat.

I reached for her with a trembling hand, and she flinched when I brushed the backs of my knuckles down her cheek. Her tears left an unwelcome warmth across her flesh, marring the reaper’s usual chill. Hazel blinked back at me, then sniffled and let out a forced laugh.

“It’s nothing,” she insisted softly, despite the fact no one could hear us. Fuck, we could scream bloody murder and every soul here would be none the wiser. The reaper wiped at her face, removing all evidence of emotion—but her eyes shimmered in the stage lights, glossy and full.

It wasn’t nothing.

It had never been nothing.

Teeth gritted, I faced her in my seat, every part of me tight—which she must have mistaken for annoyance rather than a desire to right whatever plagued her, because she blanched and shot up, sniffling again as she tossed her gold clutch on the seat.

“Sorry, Gunnar, go back to the show,” she told me, an order that fell on deaf ears. “It’s the music… It makes me emotional, that’s all. It’s beautiful.”

It’s not the music. Slowly, I stood, easily matching and then exceeding her height, even in those tall shoes. The sorrow I saw in her, sensed in her, scented on her, came from a much deeper well than an appreciation for the opera.

“I hated seeing you cry that day,” I admitted hoarsely, honest with her for the first time. She slipped around the velvet-clad chairs, putting them between us with a frown. My feet longed to follow her, but I held my place—forced myself to be still, not to stalk or covet what I had denied myself for so long. “You cry too often, Hazel.”

She sucked in her cheeks. “That’s not true—”

“I hear it.” It pained me to remember, to conjure up memories of weeping through her bedroom door, sniffling outside the piano room, shuddering breaths even as she crafted delicious meals for us alone in the kitchen. “In the house, I hear it… Sometimes when the others are asleep. Sometimes not. I hear you.”

“I… It’s not…” Lacking a clutch to fidget with, she went for her hair, mussing it rather than fixing it. Strands of white licked down her neck as she scrambled for a response. “I don’t know what you think you hear, but it’s not me. Reapers don’t weep. I don’t… You’re wrong.”

She ducked away before I could unleash the argument to prove that I was right. Darting around the posted sign, Hazel vanished into the dimly lit corridor outside our viewing balcony, and this time I moved, stalking after her swiftly and surely. In those heels, in that dress, she couldn’t evade me for long, one of my steps accounting for three of hers. My gaze blazed down her figure, from the top of her frayed white knot to the dip between her shoulders, down to the shapely full moon of her ass.

You can’t run from me, reaper.

She made it two balconies to the left of ours, following the curve of the hallway, headed—well, who knows where. Away. Away from my accusations, away from me. I caught her by the elbow before she took another step, my grip as firm as the clench of my jaw. Without her scythe, the reaper was certainly more… malleable.

Hazel let out a protesting gasp when I thrust her back into the wall, against the gold wainscoting that met tawdry red wallpaper. Her head collided against the wood, her shoulders, her hips, jostling her as I boxed her in, easily trapping her in place.

Only I had no plan from there. Grabbing her had been an impulse, a rare and fanciful moment in a life of patience and planning. Hazel tipped her head back to glare at me through watery eyes, the black shadows around her brown orbs purposeful—makeup that shimmered and glistened like her tears. The muscles along my jaw ached from the grit of my teeth, and I brought my thumbs to her cheeks, unsure of what I was doing until they made contact with her flesh.

Until they wiped her tears away. Not gently either. Aggressively, like I was determined to never see them again.

I hated them, those blasted drops. Hated what they meant, hated the sorrow they wrought within me.

“I know how it feels,” I growled, bearing down when she clutched at my wrists and yanked hard, attempting to pull me away, to free herself from this cage. Something dangerous flashed in her eyes when her efforts did nothing—nothing but bring us closer.

And for once, I didn’t run. Now that I’d touched her, tasted this intimacy like one sipped a fine wine, I couldn’t stop. Needed more. More. My hips found hers when she tried to push off the wall, forcing her back, and before either of us knew it, my hand pressed to the hollow of her throat. I swallowed thickly, fingertips digging in right above her sharp collarbone. “I know how it feels… to be so desperately alone.”

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