Page 13 of Mate Night Snack
“The edge of what?”
He didn’t answer.
“You all keep talking like these woods have rules I can’t see.”
“They do.”
“Then tell me what they are.”
“Ican’t.”
She stood, swaying a little but upright.
“Youwon’t,” she corrected.
Their eyes met, and for a second, the tension snapped into something else. Something hotter. Closer. His gaze dropped to her mouth. Hers lingered on the scar under his jaw, the one that disappeared into the collar of his shirt.
Katniss took a slow step forward.
“You’re not just trying to scare me off,” she said, voice barely above a whisper.
“No?”
“You’re trying to protect something.”
He didn’t move.
She reached out and touched the front of his shirt, just above where his heart beat slow and strong beneath the fabric.
“Maybe someone.”
He caught her wrist, not hard, but firm.
“This town doesn’t play fair,” he said.
“I never liked fair.”
They stood like that for a breath too long. Close enough to trade heat. Closer still to something unspoken. And then everything shifted.
Katniss jerked like she’d been yanked backward by a hook lodged behind her eyes. Her body stiffened. Her knees buckled. Emmett reached for her, but she was already falling.
The clearing, the trees, the night, they all blinked out.
She was standing somewhere else.
The inn. But broken.
Glass glittered across the floor like ice. The walls were scorched. Emmett lay crumpled in the hallway, blood smeared across his chest, eyes shut.
No.
The air crackled. A shadow moved at the edge of her vision. A low growl that wasn’t quite human rippled through the dark.
“Katniss,” someone said, distant and muffled.
No, no, no?—
“Katniss.”
