Page 86 of Eden's Deliverance

His neck is bent down, his eyes engrossed on the left side of his chest. Smearing the blood around, he clears away the crimson massacre to reveal a word. Not a word—a name.

RUBY

His fingers trace each letter, and when they finish the tail of the ‘Y’, he murmurs something. “...her initiation.” I don’t understand what he’s talking about, though. Adérfia Aímatos doesn’t accept women, and this isn’t anything like what our initiations looked like. “Her name, signed in blood. She’s ours,” he clarifies, but I’m more confused than ever.

She mutilated him—this was done in anger, not acceptance.

“Let’s take you home, she’s got you all fucked up.” I refasten the buttons on his shirt, being extra careful not to irritate the wound on his chest when I make it to his collar. “Come on,” I insist, but he grabs my bicep before I can make it out the door.

“No. We have to find her.” His entire demeanor flips—the hint of that smile gone from his face and replaced with a stone-cold sense of purpose.

What the fuck is this zombie-brained asshole actually talking about? “Are you insane?” I rebuke. “She tore you up, I’m not letting her anywhere near you.”

I feel like I’m the only reasonable person speaking right now, but he looks at me with a raised brow as ifI’mthe idiot. “Do you really think she doesn’t know we’re coming? She knows how consequences work with us, and she did it anyway. She’s expecting us.”

“Yeah…well, I’m still wonderinghowshe did it. Are you going to tell me what happened?”

“In the car.” He doesn’t give me time to respond before he’s out the door, so I just follow his lead.

Not like I can do anything else.

I’ve become a passenger on this road trip to hell, with Scarlett and I stuck in the backseat together while Julian drags us wherever he pleases.

I’m no longer in control.

“You told hernotto go easy on you? Are you fucking psychotic, why would you do that?” I throw my hands up in exasperation, completely dumbfounded by his stupidity. “You know she’s on a warpath for the Penelope thing. What is wrong with you?”

The bitch slaps and spits on him, and he loses his mind. Yet when she points a knife at him and orders him around, suddenly he’s the ultimate submissive pet? That’s her fucking job, not his. Role reversals don’t work for us, andespeciallynot for Julian. I don’t understand what’s going on with him to make such a turnaround for her sake.

He just shrugs his shoulders. “She made a compelling argument.”

“She called youdaddy, you weak little shit. Have some fucking dignity. She got the better of you, and you know it.” I have to laugh, because I’ve seen how controlling he is over her—how vicious he was with her on New Year’s—but this pussy dropped his guard and let her play him like a damned fiddle.

“I’ll admit, I was thrown off. And I definitely didn’t expect her to carve my heart out, but it is what it is. Now it’s my turn.”

“Ourturn,” I clarify, in case it wasn’t fucking clear. “You seem to be forgetting why you’ve even been able to fuck with her at all. Don’t start being a prick now when I’m the only reason you can even do this shit.”

I turn to look at him in the passenger’s seat, and he’s staring right back at me. There’s something about him though. He’s nothing like the Julian I know.

We’re not strangers to a bit of razzing here and there. Like I said, we’ve had our fair share of fights, but the glare in his eyes is unknown to me.

He’s never looked at me like that. Like he doesn’t give a shit what I think. Like he doesn’t care what I want or feel. Like he’s got something else occupying his brain, and whatever—or whoever—it is, is pushing me out.

“Right.I’mthe one being a prick. My apologies, your fucking highness,” he scoffs, turning away from me to look out the window.

After making a quick pitstop at home for our cloaks and masks, I drive down campus to her house and park off the main road. When I visited on her birthday,I found a secluded area that’s unfrequented enough to keep my car from sight during these hours of the night.

We take time donning our costumes before trudging through the woods to her balcony, but I’m not sure what the plan is here. Julian has a bag slung over his shoulder, but he hasn’t spoken a word to me in the past 30 minutes, so I’m not holding my breath for an explanation.

I had no intentions of following her—this is all him.

All the lights are off when we approach the house. She’s not on the balcony waiting for us like he thought she’d be, and the TV isn’t on in her room. The house is completely dead. After climbing the trellis and stalking through the balcony door, I’m surprised to find her in bed, slumbering peacefully beneath the covers.

Yeah, there’s no chance in hell she thought we’d come after her immediately. She was saving her energy for the big comeback, so ambushing her in her sleep just feels boring and artless. That’s not our game.

We wait. We watch. We stalk. We hunt.

We take our time coming up with punishments, but we don’t act on impulse.

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