Page 27 of Hunted

‘No.’ The word is calm. Final.

I look up slowly. ‘Excuse me?’

‘You’ll return here or wherever I wish to meet in seven days,’ he says. ‘And every week after that. You’ll deliver your report in person.’

Even my patience has limits. ‘Even if I have nothing to report?’

His attention sharpens like a blade finding bone. ‘You completed a retrieval in Belfast in five days that should have taken a month, dismantled a cult cell of rogue wolf-shifters in Prague who were harvesting adrenalised human blood to amplify their lunar shifts without triggering a single casualty alert, and brought in an aberrant wolf elder from Marseille while the agency was still arguing jurisdiction.’

My face stays smooth. My stomach sinks.

‘Not having anything to report,’ he continues, ‘will be regarded very badly, Miss Cross. It would render the assurances your superiors have made me… questionable.’

There it is. Confirmation, cold and heavy. ‘You’re leaning on the agency,’ I say. A statement, not a question.

‘It’s in their interest to ensure I receive a premium and expedited service,’ he corrects mildly. ‘You have near-unlimited resources. Use them wisely, but use them fast.’

The unspoken consequences hang between us, deliberate and suffocating.

I tuck the file under my arm. ‘Seven days,’ I say, not meaning it at all.

I fully intend to put at least a month between this meeting and the next.

I turn to leave.

I make it exactly two steps before the room shifts.

One moment he’s by the window, a dark, immovable presence at the edge of the city. The next, the door is at my back and he’s there.

Every instinct detonates.

He doesn’t touch me, but his arms brace against the door on either side of my head, caging me in without contact, close enough that I feel the heat of him through my clothes.

Heat.

Actual heat.

A shiver ripples up from my toes.

Aren’t vampires supposed to be cold? Every mid-to-low-level one I’ve bagged has been the wrong side of clammy. But none of them was the hot-as-fuck Vampire King of New York City. None of them smelled like crushed ice and blood-soaked roses, like dying under his feral attention might be a religious experience if his fangs were buried deep in my⁠—

No. What the actual fuck?

My breath catches, but I force it steady. Eyes forward. Muscles locked. No blink. No flinch. No gift he hasn’t earned.

Then I feel him inhale.

Slow. Deliberate. Scenting.

My mind flashes to my bathroom mirror, every light turned on, the excruciating hour I spent checking every inch of my skin twice.

No cuts, nicks or torn cuticles. Nothing exposing me to the massive vampire crouched over me, the sheer magnitude of his power.

He can’t smell me.

He can’t.

I repeat it until the words become scaffolding, holding me upright while my heart hammers hard enough to bruise. The potion holds. It has to. I refuse to let fear unravel me now.