Page 12 of Seduced

But today, she had the cat with her.

Which made her a target.

These boys were tall and strong, much stronger than her, and they were vicious. And now, apparently, they had been delighted by the cat, seeing in it potential for a few minutes of fun. The cat, meanwhile, oblivious to its impending doom, was struggling to run alongside of Poppy, but couldn’t quite catch up.

With an oath that would make even her father blush to hear it, Poppy knelt down and scooped up the cat, then tried to run even faster. But her bad leg was already strained beyond its powers, and now she had wasted precious time collecting the blasted animal.

The gang was gaining on her.

“This way!” the leader called, his face twisted in feral glee. “Don’t let ‘im get away now.”

The next second, Poppy felt his breath hot on her collar and something hard hit her on the back of the head with so much force that her heart stopped beating.

Well, not quite literally.

Oh, wait—

four

Alexei

He and Wilder ran blindly towards the screams, only to behold the strangest, most pathetic spectacle. On the gilding of a bridge that hugged the silver waters of the Thames, a group of stray boys were holding a cat over the water, upside down.

About to drown it.

But they hadn’t done it yet, and the reason was the slight figure of a boy, who had stepped between the boys and the cat, trying to stop them.

The boy was the source of the unearthly screams.

In front of Alexei’s eyes, the children grabbed the boy by the ankles and turned him upside down, lowering him over the bridge, into the Thames, as if he were an animal too.

He would drown with the cat.

Three things made Alexei pause as he ran, and none of them was the fact that he had nearly escaped death a few moments ago.

One: That was his cat the children were about to murder.

Two: That was the boy he had been following all night they were about to drown. The same filthy little spy who had forced him to come out of his club in the middle of the night: Alexei had found him. He was currently hanging upside down above the water, screaming bloody murder.

And three: Something else happened inside Alexei at the gruesome sight, something dark and slithering, that froze him on the spot.

Suddenly, the landscape changed.

It was no longer the boy, the cat and the gang dangling over the murky waters of the Thames.

It was Alexei himself.

The drowning kitten was he and he was the drowning kitten.

There was no difference between the two.

And Alexei couldn’t breathe.

“Leave him alone!” a voice sliced through his thoughts—the young boy’s voice.

Alexei whipped around, pushing his hair out of his eyes.

The street was dark, and the river was gleaming in the faint yellow light coming from the streetlamps, its smell sickening. Alexei had never been able to stomach the stench of deep, still waters.

---