“Do you feel regret when those memories grip you?”
I nodded. I was so cold, my breath was forming clouds of condensation as I exhaled. Zane stood behind me still, his presence warm on my back, and some silly part of me longed to lean back against him. Losing myself to memories was draining, like all my energy was being sapped away in those hard, painful heartbeats.
“I wish I’d run,” I said. “I wish I’d fought harder. God, I…” I stopped myself. I had to. I knew better than this, I knew better than to spill my guts. A demon like him would just use it against me, so I bit my tongue. “Of course I feel regret.”
He circled around and stood in front of me. The blade vanished from his hand, dissolving into the air, and for a moment, I was terrified that he’d changed his mind. He was going to reject me, he was going to refuse the deal, and what the hell would I do then?
Instead, he asked, “Would it ease your mind if you ran this time? If you fought? Would you feel better if I took your willing offer by force? If you run now, and I catch you…” He reached out, and I braced myself. His claws traced lightly over my throat, following the lines of my throbbing veins. “It will be exactly what you want.”
It made no sense to want to be overpowered, to desire being taken by force. But I knew what he meant. I’d sought out rough, kinky sex long enough that I understood it. I found comfort in being overpowered, so long as I’d chosen to be. I could pluck out the horror in my memories and reimagine it, make it mine.
Maybe my brain was even more shattered than I wanted to admit. But sometimes survival was fucked up, sometimes it was messy and broken. This world was full of strange things, full of pain, fear, and viciousness. I’d learned to take those things as my own.
“You want me to fight you,” I said. “But you know you’ll win.”
“As do you. You know how this game will go. You know the stakes. You know how it will end. But right now, you’re tangled up in knots of the past. You’re fighting your memories far more than you’ll fight me.”
It was as if he wanted me to feel safe. As if he wanted to find some way to make this comfortable for me. But that made no sense.
“You’re not trying to do me a kindness,” I said. “This is for your own gain.”
“Do my reasons matter? We’re both here because we want to be.” His pupils had swollen as he looked at me: the golden color of his eyes was merely a slim ring around a black void. “Giving up your soul is a form of destruction. Ripping yourself apart so that something new may come of it. That’s what you’ve chosen to do. I’m very fond of destruction, Juniper. When you belong to me, I get to destroy you again and again. Destroy the pain…the fear…the regret.”
How could I kill what couldn’t bleed, what I couldn’t grasp? I didn’t face my memories; I buried them.
I smiled bitterly. “You can’t fix me, you know.”
He shook his head as he stepped back into the shadows of the trees. “Fix you? Ah, little wolf, I have no desire to fix you. I just want to see all your broken edges shine. I want to feel how sharp you are.” He was shrouded in darkness now: all I could see of him was his eyes, and his sharp grinning teeth.
Slowly, I took my knife back out from its sheath. I didn’t trust him; the idea was absolutely ludicrous. Yet I was still here. I was still offering my soul. Was there trust in that? “I can’t pretend to fight. If you tell me to fight you, I will.”
“I hope so. I want to see my little wolf bite.”
I’d been alone for years. Not once, in all that time, had someone reached out to my disastrous, broken self and said, “This one is mine. This one is what I want.” I was only fit for Gods and monsters, and I’d always run from them.
But this monster was something different. Something strange. This one I couldn’t escape from, because I didn’t want to.
So I ran.
Running opened the floodgates, and panic swept in.
It gripped every inch of me. It took my muscles and squeezed them, like cruel fingers digging into me, painful and unshakeable. It placed an anvil on my lungs, so every breath was too shallow, and the air wasn’t enough. My head was cold; cold and light like a balloon on the verge of popping.
Panic is a strange thing, when you’ve felt it for so long. It never feels normal; it feels familiar. It becomes an unpleasant friend, one I wanted to leave behind but was also alarmed by the absence of. To not feel panic would have been suspicious. It would have meant I’d let my guard down too much, I’d let myself get too comfortable.
Panic kept me safe. Panic kept me angry. Panic kept me fighting.
It wasn’t even Zane I feared. It wasn’t the deal I’d asked for that filled me with terror like this. It was hooks in my flesh dragging me back through years, back to a place when I’d had no power nor choice…
I was trembling with exhaustion as I grasped the muddy wall of the shaft again, sobbing as I tried to pull myself up. But my arms were shaking so violently that I slipped back down. Down into the dark.
I wasn’t alone down here. There should have been no life, no sound, no movement…but I could hear their rough breathing, their growling. Their hulking forms moved in the dark, circling me. I clutched my arms around my bleeding chest, shaking violently, whispering to myself, “No. No, no…no…”
There were white eyes in skeletal heads, black tongues, and sharp fangs that dripped gray, putrid saliva at the sight of me. And in the deepest shadows there were creatures as pale as the moon itself, skin so translucent the throbbing red membranes of their insides were visible through it.
That awful voice was calling my name. Calling me deeper into the dark.
I paused. I pressed my back against the thick trunk of a tree and ground my fist against the rough bark until my skin burned. This wasn’t the same, I had to remember that. I was here by choice. It was like my brain had been split in half; one half fighting for reality, the other striving to drag me back into memories.
I wanted this. I needed this. I kept running.
It was too dark to see. The silhouettes of the trees stretched on ahead of me, endless in every direction. There was no trail, no path to follow. The ferns whipped my legs as I ran, branches scratched my face. I didn’t know where I was going.
The rain came down harder and I paused again, catching my breath as I searched the shadows. I was running from something that could track me by scent, could easily overwhelm my speed, and could hear my heartbeat. There was no hiding. There was no escaping.
I didn’t have to escape, I had to remember that. It was okay to be caught this time.
Adrenaline couldn’t differentiate between this and true danger. I wanted a deal with a demon, and I had no idea if I could trust him. His every word could be a lie. Maybe I was going to die in that forest. Maybe these were the last breaths I’d ever draw.
But the better part of me knew that wasn’t true. Somehow, despite all the fear, despite the invasive memories, I knew Zane wasn’t going to kill me. He was going to catch me. He was going to hurt me. He was going to make me his.
Somehow, that excited me.
If I was honest with the darkest parts of myself, that even turned me on.
I climbed over a fallen pine and slid down the short ridge beyond it, crouching close to the dirt with the protruding roots digging into my back as I took slow, deep breaths. Always think one step ahead. Don’t lose focus. Be prepared to kill. The demon wanted me to fight him, so I’d fucking fight him. He wanted to claim me, but I wasn’t going to make it easy for him.
Snap.
I froze. Slow breath in, count to ten. Slow breath out, count to ten. Look up.
Golden eyes gazed down at me with a wide, sharp smile. “Hello, little wolf.”
I slashed out with the knife as I threw myself aside to avoid him. The blade made contact, but there was no time to revel in satisfaction. I regained my balance, half-running and half-sliding down the steepening slope, my boots catching on vines and roots as I went. There was a gully nearby somewhere. I’d seen it as I hiked in. But it was nearly pitch black, and in my rush, I’d lost track of exactly where I was.
I found the gully face-first.
I landed hard in the mud, the air knocked from my lungs. I rolled to my back, gasping, water flowing around me. I had to get up, I had to keep running. Zane’s deep voice chuckled from above me, his footsteps crunching as he paced just out of my sight.
“Aww, little wolf. Think before you run. Don’t panic now.”
I shoved myself up. But when I looked over the ledge, he wasn’t there. I spun around, surveying the woods on the opposite side of the gully. Nothing. I held my knife up, at the ready, my head light with the cocktail of chemicals flooding my bloodstream.
One hand seized around my throat from behind, the other gripped my wrist with the blade. I flung my head back and hit his face, but I may as well have slammed my skull against a brick wall. The impact dazed me, and for a moment my vision shifted, the forest around me vanishing.
The long, dark mine tunnel. Gray light. Water dripping overhead. Tentacles coiling toward me out of the dark —
“Hey, hey, wake the fuck up.”
He slapped my cheek, snapping me back from the nightmares that waited eagerly at the edge of my consciousness. He released me with a shove, and I caught myself on the wall of the gully, turning to face him. “Don’t let It overtake you. It will claim every moment of vulnerability you have if you let It. It will take your pleasure, your pain, your living. Don’t let It.”
I blinked rapidly, knife at the ready, or as ready as I could be, considering I felt as if I’d just been jolted out of sleep. “How…how do you know that?”
He twitched, as if resisting the urge to seize me again. Instead, he paced, fingers clenching and unclenching at his sides. “Let’s just say that Gods and demons don’t get along.” He bared his teeth, a growl rising in his throat as he said viciously, “It’s not allowed to distract you from me, Juniper. Gods are jealous, but so am I. Only I’m allowed to torment you.”
He lunged, and I slashed. From his mouth to his cheek, just below his eye, blood welled up and began to drip. I backed away slowly as he raised his hand and touched the gash, then gazed down curiously at his bloodied fingers.
“So the little wolf can bite.” He chuckled. “Good. Very good, Juniper. Fuck. You made me hard.”
I shouldn’t have looked down. I shouldn’t have been curious. I shouldn’t have gotten so hot at the sight of his rigid cock pressing against his pants, betraying its unnatural, terrifying size. Something demanding coiled in my belly; a snake with fangs dripping with lust.
I shouldn’t have felt lust for him. Not him. Not a monster.
I sprinted away. I had no idea how close he was, I had no time to think. I used a stone jutting out from the dirt to launch myself up, landing hard against the side of the ravine and scrambling up. Don’t look back, don’t stop. Just run, run.
He’d gotten ahead of me. I slammed into him so hard it knocked me back on my ass, but this time he didn’t give me the opportunity to get up again. He pinned me down as I thrashed wildly with the knife, trying to slash him anywhere I could. He laughed as he caught my hands, pressing them to the dirt and grinding his hips down against mine. His cock pressed against me, hard and thick, separated from me only by thin layers of clothing. The heat in me was spreading, settling traitorously between my legs as Zane smiled, the blood from his cut lip running into his mouth and staining his sharp teeth red.
“What now, Juniper? Shall I let you run some more?” He used his knee to pin my wrist, and with his free hand, he grabbed my face and squeezed. “Open up, little wolf. Taste the blood you’ve drawn.”
Some mad part of me obeyed, opening my mouth for his bloodied fingers. It was sharp like iron but bizarrely sweet, and it made a shudder run through my entire body.
“More,” I whispered, and he tweaked an eyebrow, shifting slightly. The slight shift was all I needed. “More!” I wrenched my hand free, plunging the knife toward him. He didn’t even try to dodge me. He let the blade slice through his shirt down to his chest, opening up a fresh red line across his tattooed flesh.
But I was still pinned, and it was all too easy for him to take back the control of my arm.
“Oh, fuck, yes.” He moaned from between clenched teeth, and held my arm still as he licked his blood from my knife. “That’s my girl.”
I strained so hard against him that every muscle ached. “I’m…not…yours!” I bit out every word like a curse, trying to buck up my hips to throw him off. He let me go, leaping back from me with unnatural speed, but it wasn’t because I’d won my struggle.
He wanted to play with me a little longer.
He tugged off his torn shirt and tossed it to the forest floor, rolling his shoulders. His chest was a canvas of tattooed art, the detail of the black and white pieces astounding. The lines and shadows, the stunningly realistic faces, were mesmerizing — even more so with his blood smeared across them.
He opened his arms, smirking. “More, little wolf? You want more? Then come get it. Hurt me.”
I went at him with everything I had left. As if my life depended on it. As if I could actually win. But like running in a dream, my every movement was too slow. He dodged around me like my attacks were nothing more than child’s play. He leaped to the side, then behind, and laughed as he shoved my back and sent me down to my knees.
“Come on, little wolf. Bite harder.”
My mind was racing, but not with fear. This was a release of every pent-up terror inside me. Most days, I forced myself to silence my own screams, to hold back the desire to fight and the wild urges to run. But not tonight. Tonight, I set myself free. Those knotted memories holding me so tightly had been loosened.
He wanted me to bite harder? Then I’d fucking bite harder.
I swung the knife as he came near me again, and the blade sunk deep into his side. A little wince of pain flickered across his face, and I gasped, jerking back, shocked for a moment that he’d let me stab him.
“Now, there’s a good bite. Fuck, yes.”
I’d been a fool to think I’d hurt him. He seized me, my hair knotted in his hand, and forced me to stay there on my knees as he tugged the blade from his flesh. He groaned as he looked at it, but it wasn’t with pain; it was with pleasure. He held the blade up to my lips, golden eyes bright in the dark, and hissed, “Go on. Taste your handiwork.”
I really was sick to want it. I was sick to feel the heat stir inside me at that, to look at the wound I’d left him with and feel turned-on as hell. I ran my tongue along the metal as he watched, and the muscle in his arm jumped as I licked my lips and gazed up at him.
“How does it taste?” he said.
“Like your pain,” I said. “And it’s pretty damn good.”
“Fuck, that’s my girl.”
He wrenched me aside, and I had to catch myself with my hands in the mud. His grip loosened, but only so he could press his boot down between my shoulder blades before I could stand. Harder — harder — he crushed me down against the dirt. He knelt beside me, his boot still on my back, grinning, as I glared at him with my cheek in the mud.
“You fought hard, little wolf,” he said. The cut across his face was already healing. Little more than a slim red line remained in its place now. The wound in his side would soon follow. “Now it’s my turn to make you bleed.”
