Page 75 of A Hunger Soft and Wild

I go still.

She keeps talking, confident, despite being the one pinned. “Now, Icouldturn her in myself. Drag her back kicking and screaming, deliver her all nice and wrapped up. But—” she flicks her gaze to me, gauging, “—I figured I’d give you an offer first.”

The air in the room shifts. Aria tenses above her, waiting.

Selis’s smirk widens. “We split it. Fifty-fifty. No one gets hurt. No one even has to know you were involved. Hell, I’ll even be the one to do the dirty work. Just say the word.”

My fists clench.

Aria stiffens like she’s been struck, her breath catching audibly.

Selis chuckles. “C’mon, Roan. You’re practical. You know this is a bad investment. She’sdangerous—”

“She’s not yours to sell.” My voice cuts through the room, cold and sharp.

Selis’s amusement falters.

I take a step forward, slow and deliberate. “I don’tsellinnocent people, Selis. And I don’tbetraythem.”

She exhales through her nose, shaking her head like I’m the one being unreasonable. “That’s rich, coming from you. You of all people should know what happens when you let yourself get attached to strays.”

A very specific kind of anger flares inside me.

She sees it.Pushes it.

She tilts her head, watching me with the kind of casual cruelty that used to be entertaining—before I learned better.

“You’d think after last time, you’d have learned your lesson. What was his name again?” she purrs, voice laced with mock sympathy.

My stomach turns to stone.

Selis grins, seeing the shift in my expression. “Ah, that’s right.Garrick.” Selis hums thoughtfully. “You and I both know howthatended. You can’t help yourself, can you? You find some poor bastard, make them feel safe, and then—”

She doesn’t get to finish.

Because Aria moves.

Faster than I expect, faster than Selis expects.

The knife flicks from Selis’s throat to her shoulder, and Aria presses—just hard enough to make a point. Just hard enough to break skin.

A thin line of crimson beads against the steel, slipping down in a slow, deliberate path.

Selis hisses through her teeth, the first crack in her carefully crafted arrogance.

Aria leans in, voice low and lethal. “Say his name again,” she dares, her grip steady. “See what happens.”

She presses the bladejusta fraction deeper, and Selis flinches.

Aria’s lips curl—not in amusement, not even in anger, but in something colder. Sharper. “You know, I’ve beenverygood lately,” she murmurs, her breath ghosting against Selis’s ear. “I swore off feeding on humans. Told myself I wouldn’t sink to their level. That I’d bebetter.”

She tilts her head, studying Selis like a wolf sizing up a wounded deer.

“But you,” she continues, voice silky with menace, “I think I could make an exception for.”

Selis’s smirk is gone now, wiped clean. Her breathing shallows, her pulse a rapid staccato in her throat.

“You talk too much,” Aria adds, a mockery of casual indifference. “And Idoget hungry.”

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