Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 60921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 305(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 305(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
I shift closer, half climbing onto the couch without thinking, one knee beside his hip, straddling, my hand curling over his shoulder. He’s solid under my fingers, all lean strength and coiled tension.
He kisses me like he’s been holding back for years.
Like I’m something he’s denied himself for a long, long time.
It’s addictive.
It’s terrifying.
It’s perfect.
Then he breaks away, breathing hard, forehead pressed to mine. “Fuck,” he whispers.
“Good ‘fuck’ or bad ‘fuck’?” I pant.
“Dangerous ‘fuck.’” He gently untangles us, his hands lingering for a second longer than they should. He sets me back on my feet like I’m made of glass and sin.
I sway.
He steadies me. “I told you,” he says hoarsely. “Once I start…”
He doesn’t finish.
He doesn’t have to.
My body is already filling in the blanks.
I could push.
I want to.
God, do I want to.
But there’s something fragile in his eyes. Not fear of me. Fear of himself. Fear of losing control at exactly the wrong time, in exactly the wrong situation.
We’re being hunted.
We’re exhausted.
We’re in a cabin in the woods with only one bed and a very bad idea sizzling between us.
So—for once—I pull back. “Okay,” I say softly. “We hit pause.”
His eyes close briefly, like he wasn’t expecting that.
“We’re not stopping,” I add, because I have to be honest. “I’m not. Whatever this is? You and me? It’s not going away. But… we can take a breath. For now.”
He looks at me like I just handed him oxygen. “Sleep,” he says quietly. “Please.”
It’s the “please” that does me in.
I nod. “Okay. But if you have nightmares, you’re allowed to climb into my bed too.”
A ghost of a smile touches his lips. “Go to bed, Lark.”
I back toward the hallway, mouth tingling, heart pounding. At the doorway, I pause. “Knight?”
“Yeah?”
“That thing you said earlier,” I say. “About not letting anything happen to me?”
His gaze locks on mine.
“I believe you,” I say.
His jaw works. “Good,” he replies. “Because I meant it.”
I smile. Then I slip back into the bedroom, close the door softly, and crawl into bed.
Sleep finds me quicker this time.
But before it does, one thought curls warm and fierce in my chest:
He’s not just the predator anymore.
He’s mine.
And God help anyone who tries to take him away.
NINE
STIR-CRAZY AND OTHER UNDERSTATEMENTS
KNIGHT
The first thing I register when I wake up is pain.
My spine protests the couch like it personally wronged me in a past life. There’s a spring lodged somewhere under my left shoulder blade, my neck is kinked at a question mark angle, and my right foot is half-asleep, toes tingling.
The second thing I register is the silence.
No traffic. No sirens. No neighbors yelling. Just trees breathing and the faint tick of the old fridge.
And under that, softer, from down the short hallway—
The slow, steady sound of Lark’s breathing.
I let my eyes stay closed for another second.
Last night hits me in disjointed flashes:
Her bare feet on the floor.
Her big eyes in the dim lamplight.
Her voice, soft and raw, saying I trust you with my heart.
The way her mouth felt under mine.
How hard it was to stop.
How much of me didn’t want to.
I scrub a hand over my face and force myself upright. The couch groans in solidarity. The blanket slides into my lap.
“Morning, idiot,” I mutter at myself.
I check the cheap analog watch Arrow gave me “for when the grid goes down and your fancy toys are trash.”
Just after 7 a.m.
The world outside this cabin doesn’t care that I kissed my best friend’s little sister on a couch last night. It just cares that my face and hers are pinned to a darknet bounty board with a payout high enough to attract the worst kind of attention.
I stand, stretch until my back pops, then pad over to the small pack on the table.
Time to check in.
Ranger packed us a little metal box—looks like an old transistor radio, actually a portable, low-power, directional modem wired to a ruggedized tablet. It can’t stream, can’t browse, can’t do anything fun.
But it can punch a thin, encrypted hole through the sky for five minutes at a time if I aim it right.
Arrow made me promise: once in the morning, once at night, five minutes max each.
I set the box on the table, angle the little antenna toward the gap in the trees Ranger marked in the notes left with the box, and thumb the power switch.
The indicator light blinks once. Twice. Goes steady.
The tablet on the table buzzes softly to life, the offline UI waking up and automatically launching one app.
Not labeled Discord.
But it is.
A hardened, skinned, buried version, routed through more layers than I care to think about.
Our server pops up—just one channel lit.
#burner-briefing
I flex my fingers once and start typing.
Knight: On grid, five minutes. Cabin secure. No tails last night.
Arrow’s icon pops up first, the little neon arrowhead Ozzy made him as a joke.