Page 66 of Mate Night Snack
"He'll turn on you eventually. They always do. The violence is in their nature, bred into their very bones. How long before his 'protective instincts' become possession? How long before protecting you becomes controlling you? How long before you disappoint him the way that poor whelp disappointed him, and he decides mercy isn't worth the cost?"
The world tilted sideways. Everything she thought she knew about Emmett, about their bond, about the man she'd fallen in love with, suddenly felt uncertain. The guilt she'd sensed in him, the careful way he held himself back sometimes, the shadows that haunted his eyes when he thought she wasn't looking.
"I can see the wheels turning," Ashwin purred. "All those little moments that didn't quite add up, all those careful words that danced around the whole truth. You're starting to understand, aren't you? What he really is underneath all that control?"
"Stop." Her hands were shaking now, the mate mark burning like acid against her skin.
"A killer, sweet child. A killer who's very good at pretending to be tame. But you've seen glimpses of what lies beneath, haven't you? The way his eyes change when he's angry. The careful way he measures his strength. The violence that lurks just beneath the surface, waiting for the right moment to break free."
Through the bond, she felt Emmett getting closer, his panic and fury blazing like a beacon. But alongside it came something else, something she'd never noticed before. The weight of old guilt, the careful control he maintained over something dark and predatory, the constant vigilance of someone who didn't trust himself completely.
"Run, little seer," Ashwin whispered, and suddenly his human mask slipped just enough to show something monstrous underneath. "Run before he gets here. Because once he finds you with me, once he sees what I've shown you, that careful control is going to snap. And you really don't want to be here when it does."
Terror overrode thought. Not terror of Ashwin, though he was terrifying enough, but terror of the doubts he'd planted, of the possibility that everything she'd believed about Emmett might be built on lies. She turned and ran, crashing through the garden gate and into the forest beyond.
She ran blindly, branches tearing at her clothes and her hair, the mate mark pulsing with such intensity it felt like her neck was on fire. She could hear Emmett calling her name somewhere behind her, his voice raw with desperation, but she couldn't stop. Couldn't face him until she'd sorted through the chaos in her head.
She should have recognized the signs, should have noticed the way the trees seemed to bend inward, the way the light tookon that strange, ethereal quality that meant she was approaching a thin place in the Veil.
But her mind was too full of Ashwin's poison to pay attention to her surroundings.
The trap closed around her like a fist.
One moment she was running through normal forest, the next she was caught in a web of twisted magic that sent her seer abilities into overdrive. Visions slammed into her consciousness from all directions, past and present and possible futures tangling together until she couldn't tell which was which.
She saw Emmett as he'd been years ago, younger and harder, standing over bodies that had once been pack mates. Saw the moment he'd chosen mercy and the terrible consequences that followed. Saw the guilt that had eaten at him ever since, the careful walls he'd built to contain the violence that was as much a part of him as breathing.
But she also saw other things. The way he'd held her when she collapsed from her first vision. The gentle patience he'd shown when teaching her to defend herself. The absolute terror in his eyes when he'd thought she might leave.
The real Emmett. The man who'd chosen love over fear, who'd built something beautiful from the ashes of his past.
But the Veil trap made it impossible to hold onto clarity. Magic designed to disorient and confuse turned her own abilities against her, until she was drowning in a sea of conflicting images and emotions that belonged to someone else entirely.
She fell to her knees in the moss, mate mark blazing like a star, and wondered if this was how it ended. Lost in her own mind.
At least now she understood why her preparations hadn't mattered.
She'd been ready for physical danger, for magical attacks, for threats she could see coming.
She hadn't been ready for the doubts that had been lurking in her own heart all along.
28
EMMETT
The mate bond was screaming.
Emmett crashed through the forest like a man possessed, branches tearing at his clothes and his skin as he followed the invisible thread that connected him to Katniss. Her terror poured through their connection in waves, followed by confusion and pain that made his wolf howl with rage. She was hurt. She was afraid. And she was moving away from safety with every passing second.
He should have felt Ashwin's presence the moment that bastard set foot on Hollow Oak soil. But the emergency Council meeting had run long while Katniss sat alone in what they'd all believed was the most protected location in town.
"Stupid," he snarled to himself, leaping over a fallen log without breaking stride. "Should have stayed with her. Should have known he'd find a way through the wards."
Her scent was everywhere and nowhere, confused by the strange energy that clung to this part of the forest like fog. Not the clean, natural magic of the Veil, but something twisted and wrong that made his skin crawl. Shadow magic. The kind of dark power that left stains on everything it touched.
Through the bond, he felt the exact moment Katniss stumbled into the trap.
Her panic spiked to unbearable levels as her seer abilities went haywire. He could feel her confusion, her desperate attempt to sort reality from illusion as the trap turned her own gifts against her.
