Page 129 of Claiming Pretty

I should tell Ciaran the truth—that Ty and I hadn’t stopped after he left.

That, technically, I’d lost because Ty had made me come, harder than I’d ever come, and I couldn’t hold my cries back.

But I couldneveradmit that to Ciaran. It would destroy him.

And Liath and the missing girls were counting on me. They needed me to take down the Sochai, to get them justice. I couldn’t let anything jeopardize that—not even this.

The euphoria ebbed, replaced by the cold clarity of reality. The weight of what lay ahead bore down like a suffocating fog.

I was entering the Sochai’s lair with Ciaran for his initiation, playing the part of the drugged, helpless girl.

And I had no idea what horrors were waiting for us.

THE WARDEN

The surveillance van we’d parked behind the ruins of Ashcradle House was goddamn claustrophobic. I’d only been in the back for ten minutes and yet I couldn’t fucking breathe.

I wanted to burst out the door, to sink my bare feet into the grass and suck in fresh air, but I was supposed to be paying attention to Ciaran as he went through all the listening equipment I was in charge of while he went in with Ava.

Ciaran looked over his shoulder at me from his place at the computer, which he’d installed in the back of the van along with a shit ton of other technical equipment.

“So does that make sense?” he asked.

He stood to make room for me to take his seat.

I did, but I would have rather been strapped down to an electric chair. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d lost so much control of myself. Panic rose in me like a flood and there was nothing I could seem to do about it.

All the tricks I’d learned during my time in prison—mybreathing, my repetitive tapping, my mental disassociation—were proving useless.

I had never been enthusiastic about this plan—Ava’s plan—but I had wanted to support her. But now, when I was actually faced with letting her go, with letting go of the sight of her as she descended into the passagetomb, with giving up control, I wasn’t sure I could go through with it.

Ciaran frowned. “Are you alright?”

I glanced over toward the front of the van where Ava sat hunched over a laptop in the passenger seat. I could just see her small, delicate fingers moving over the keyboard. What if I never touched them to my lips ever again?

Get ahold of yourself!

It wasn’t fucking working.

Gesturing wildly to the panel of instruments, I said, “I’ll just fuck all this up.”

I tried to push the chair back to escape, but Ciaran set his boot behind me to lock me in place.

The sound of my own teeth gritting against each other set me on edge. Evidence of my breakdown.Fuck.

“I should go in as you. You should man all this shit,” I said, shoving back again with the same result.

In a cold, unrelenting voice stolen from me, Ciaran said, “You’ll manage just fine.”

He knew I wanted to be the one to go with Ava.

Did he feel the same as me? That it was torture to leave her side for what could be the last time?

“We both know I could pass as you,” I said.

“What about your tats?” my brother asked.

“If I cover them up—”

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