Page 199 of Hunting Pretty

A shudder ran through me as tension filled the musty cellar air.

Each step he took down the stairs landed like a countdown, the thudding reverberating in my skull.

I whimpered in fear as the High Lord stopped on the second step, directly in front of Cormac.

His pale hands with long fingers reached out from dark clothes to cup Cormac’s face.

Cormac leaned affectionately into the touch as the High Lord gently lifted Cormac’s face upward.

A blade flashed out like lightning, too quick to track, slicing cleanly through the air. The High Lord’s hand moved with terrifying precision, and in one fluid motion, the steel met Cormac’s throat.

The sound of it—a sharp, wet slice—echoed in my ears as vivid crimson blood bubbled and gushed from the open wound.

Cormac’s eyes widened in absolute shock, his face frozen in a grimace of disbelief. His hands shot up to his neck, desperate fingers pressing against the torrent of blood as if he could somehow stop the inevitable.

But there was no stopping it.

The blood poured faster, spilling down his chest in dark rivulets.

He toppled over, crashing onto the concrete floor with a sickening crack, the sound of bone meeting stone echoingthrough the room, his arms and legs bent at unnatural, grotesque angles as his body hit the ground.

I screamed, a guttural, terrified sound tearing from my throat as I stared at Cormac’s lifeless face—his wide, sightless eye locked on me, frozen in that same expression of disbelief.

A pool of sticky blood spread beneath him, dark and thick, soaking into his clothes, consuming him.

He was dead.

I stared at Cormac’s body, a strange mix of emotions churning inside me. Relief washed over me first, like a wave I couldn’t hold back.

He was dead. My captor was gone, and with him, the immediate danger.

The weight pressing down on my chest loosened, and for the first time in what felt like hours, I could breathe.

But then that relief twisted into something heavier, something I wasn’t expecting. Sadness. Not grief, exactly—not for him—but sadness for the loss of any life.

Because no matter what he’d done, no matter how much I hated him in those moments when he tormented me, there had been good times once.

Brief flashes of laughter during the few months that we dated, moments when we’d been something resembling friends. Those moments felt like a distant dream now, but they had been real.

I didn’t like Cormac. But I never wanted him dead.

I never wanted him to lose his life like this. There was something profoundly tragic about it, about watching someone’s life end, no matter who they were.

As I stared at his lifeless body, I couldn’t shake the emptiness that settled in my gut.

He was gone, and while I was free from him, the finality of it felt… wrong. Like something that couldn’t be undone, even if I wanted it to be.

Fear slammed into me, harder and sharper now, and I yanked desperately at my bound hands. The pain shot through my wrists, so fierce it made my lungs seize up.

Oh God.The High Lord had killed his own soldier without hesitation, without even a second thought.

He wasn’t just a terrible man. He was a ruthless monster, a psychopath who would kill his own men as easily and callously as one would squash a bug.

If the High Lord treated his own men with such cold disregard, how would he treat me?

After he took me, no one would be left to know where I’d gone.

He descended the final step, each footfall slow and deliberate. There was no urgency, no rush, just the slow, menacing approach of a predator.

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