Page 30 of Love's Ace

Of needing…

“Theo, stop!” Wren’s voice caught me off guard, the demand in it infuriating. I whirled, and I didn’t realize until I raised my hand that the nails were tipped with claws.

I was burning again—my fear chasing away whatever safety net had been put in place. The edge of my vision was catching to red, and I wanted to kill him.

I wanted to tear him apart.

I wanted to rip the thread from between us.

I wanted—

Wren caught my fingers in his, jerking my arm down. I thought for a second he meant to hurt me, and I raised my other hand to push him away, to claw at him, to do whatever it took to get himoffme…

And then I realized he wasn’t moving.

He was just…

He was holding my hand.

His fingers chased away the heat trying to scorch its way straight through my veins. It made me pause.

I could kill him.

Icould havekilled him.

He wasn’t even putting his hand up to defend himself. He just stared at me with those violet eyes and waited.

My hand dropped to my side and I frowned.

Under Wren’s steady gaze, the fight slowly drained out of me, and I finally dropped my eyes to the ground.

“Feel better?” His voice was soft, calm. Calmer than I deserved.

“Yeah,” I muttered, and he tugged on my fingers, not letting my hand go as he started to walk.

“Good.”

We were silent after that, and I had to admit there was something novel about what we were doing as he led me from the building. I’d never just… walked down the street with someone before without feeling like something bad was going to happen. I’d never been led somewhere that I wasn’t suspicious of.

It waseasywalking with my hand in his. It was definitely something I could get used to, which made it more dangerous than I wanted to admit. As we rounded the corner, I started to pull away again—the same problem I’d felt earlier was back, but now I couldn’t summon the anger to take action like I usually would. How did I tell him that I couldn’t do this? That touching him was almostworsethan the fire that threatened to pour through me when I didn’t, because I was more afraid of getting used to the feeling than I was of losing myself. Because if I lostthis…

Wren turned when I moved, and his eyes went cold. My defenses instantly jerked into place when he grabbed a blade from his side, and I tried to jerk my hand out of his. Had this all been some kind of ruse after all, to lure me into a false sense of security?

“Move,Theo.” He used his grip on me to twist our bodies and throw me behind him. When I turned to take a swing at him, I realized it wasn’t me he’d pulled the knife for.

There were twothingsstanding in front of him. They were tall, all muscle and agility. Their red eyes were like halos in the darkness of the alley we’d walked through, and when one slashed a hand forward at Wren, I saw the black claws on its fingertips.

It lookedalmosthuman…ethereal in a way. Angular features and full lips filled with sharp teeth. When Wren swiped forward with his blade and cut the back of its hand, itroaredas black blood dripped to the ground.

Enmity.

This is what I was going to turn into—this was the thing Wren was sworn to kill.

I looked down at my hands almost numbly… at the way my nails had gone black and sharp… like claws.

Like those things.

Like the thing that had attacked me, even though I’d thought it was a dream.

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