Page 152 of House of Lilith

I sense him move forward and I block him with my arm as I keep my eyes on Max.

It’s making my eyebrows pull down, the way he’s acting, strangely calm and collected, but the next thing I know, there’s Ricky running past the open door behind him, spotting us, doubling back and barging in to say, “Boss, everyone, come on, the Game’s about to start.”

And once he’s done, I see his eyebrows pull down as his eyes sweep over the three of us.

But then Dahrian pushes past me and starts marching over to him, without throwing me a single glance.

My mind feverishly blank and my body restless and limp at the same time, I watch the two of them walk out the door and disappear to the left.

When I snap out of it, Max is still there, looking at me.

I move to push past him, but he grabs me by the wrist and leans to whisper in my ear, “I think we need to talk, Anastasya. First thing after the Game.”

I just look at him. And I did hear what he just said, but my mind refuses to linger on it,at all. I break myself free and start rushing after Dahrian, wanting to catch him before the Game,needingto catch him before the Game, the way he wouldn’t even look at me just now making me feel an unbearable restlessness.

Chapter 26 - Dahrian

Isenseitwhenshe starts closing the distance between us, but I just keep walking down the hallway with the rest of the players, all my energy and focus being spent on trying not to lose my shit. Calming my heavy breathing, releasing the tension in my muscles, trying to stop my mind from imploding.

Not think about it, not think about any of it, that’s what I need to do right now.

So it makes me breathe a sigh of relief, when one of the doors ahead opens and out comes the Archon, waiting for us to file inside.

If this were happening under any other circumstances, I’d probably feel surprise at the fact we’re actually going to be having an indoor Game.

Right now, it fails to interest me in the least.

But the look on Brogan’s face when it’s my turn to step inside,thatgives me pause. She looks… absent somehow.

I stop and I move a little to the side of the door, letting everyone else walk through and all the while making sure my eyes don’t land on a certain someone. Two certain someones, to be more exact.

But the Archon is already throwing me a funny glance so I lean in to ask, “Is everything okay?”

It makes me frown, when she squints at me. “Why do you ask?”

Is it all in my head? Am I projecting?

“No reason,” I say.

Still, I get my fox to take a subtle whiff of her, to see if any red flags come up.

Nothing.

I shake my head and I move for the door, but she stops me.

“Good luck,” she says, simply, when I turn to her.

I give her a nod, but I fail to force myself to throw in a smile.

And once I walk inside, for a second, my mind busies itself by scanning the room.

The barely lit,enormousfucking classroom that looks more like a crossbreed between an arena and a courtroom, with the rectangular ring in the middle and the stone steps where the audience is already sitting surrounding it from all sides, everything in grim-looking, dark and bare stone.

But as soon as I feel myself nudged to join the other players at the center of the ring, my eyes dart back toher. And all I see is this stiffness in her pale face.

I come to stand beside Ricky, who throws me a funny look, but I just give him a nod, failing to stop the urge to tip my head to the right, where she’s standing, and checking who’s standing beside her.

And it gives me some pleasure at least, to see she’s far away from that fucking asshole, butthat, in turn, only makes me feel even more pissed. Because it makes me remember the way she said ‘Max’ when just now she spotted him, and the way she stopped me from coming at him, it all making a knife twist in my stomach.

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