Chapter 2 Run, Run, Run

Eva

I jerked back a step, my boot heel catching on the catwalk's edge. I’d seen that look once before, in a dream I’d woken from screaming. A faceless man holding a dead bird out to me, asking me to touch the blood.

The crowd erupted again, louder this time, because the king of The Pit had just vaulted the twelve-foot cage wall as if it were nothing. Barefoot. Moving faster than anything that size should. He landed on the packed dirt floor, and the noise died instantly.

All that muscle and silver were coming for me.

I spun around, my bag slamming against my hip as I ran. Hell no. I didn’t care about the rent. I didn’t care about the torc. I wanted to get out. My boots thundered on the steel catwalk. I didn't dare look back. I could feel him behind me, a heavy presence closing the distance with terrifying speed. The hairs on my arms stood on end. My throat tightened.

A raw, guttural growl ripped through the silence, echoing off the stone walls, so loud it vibrated in my bones. My mind flashed to the moon. The full moon, big and silver and terrifying. The fear slammed into me again, hot and suffocating.

But the fear of him was worse.

I burst through the doors into the elevator shaft, with my escape plan all I could think about. I had to get out of this godforsaken hole in the ground.

I scrambled for the cable, my fingers fumbling and my heart pounding against my ribs. I could hear him below, calm and steady, no longer running, just walking. The sound was worse than when he was chasing me.

I grasped the cable and hoisted myself up, my arms aching and muscles burning. I moved upward more quickly, driven by a terror I couldn't fully understand.

Why was I running? What was happening? He was just a man. A huge, very scary man, but a man.

But every time I tried to reason with myself, that one part of my brain, the one that kept me alive through midnight escapes and one memorable shootout behind a Piggly Wiggly, shrieked that he wasn't just anything.

The cable shuddered beneath my grip. No. Not shuddered. It was pulled. Hard.

I almost lost my grip, my boots scraping the inner wall as I held on tighter, my breath catching in my throat. I told myself not to look down and to resist, but I looked down anyway.

He stood at the bottom of the shaft, his head tilted back, looking directly at me. No expression. No haste in his breathing. His chest rose and fell with a steady rhythm.

My stomach dropped. He had one massive hand wrapped around the elevator cable and tugged again, as if testing how easy it would be to send me plunging to my death. Or to bring me down.

That cable was made of thick steel, and I was sure he wouldn’t be able to snap it easily. I tried to reassure myself, but my fear went beyond logic.

“Nope,” I whispered, voice cracking. “Absolutely not. Fuck off.”

He didn’t. Obviously.

He started climbing, and I screamed internally. He moved faster, using the cable like a fireman’s pole, all that muscle, sinew, and intense focus flowing up toward me.

I scrambled upward like a terrified monkey, my shoulder protesting, and my braid whipping around my face. I didn't stop when I reached the top. I pulled myself over the edge of the shaft onto the dusty floor of the church, not even caring about the splinters that jabbed into my palms.

The moment I found my footing, I ran, and I did not look back.

I burst through the side door and went through the fence again. I was half a mile down the dirt road when I found my Ducati exactly where I’d chained her. My hands shook so hard I almost dropped the keys. I jammed them in the ignition, twisted, and the engine roared to life. The most beautiful sound I’d ever heard.

I peeled out and sped away, with headlights cutting through the pitch-black mountain road as my tires skidded on loose gravel. I didn't slow down until reaching the main highway, my knuckles turning white as I held tightly to the handlebars.

The moon was out. Not full, but close enough. A sick, familiar dread twisted in my gut.

I tried to dismiss everything that had happened as adrenaline, as some fear of a dangerous man in a dangerous place. He was icky, that must be it. Why else would I, Eva Harlow, professional smartass and unshakeable badass, be so rattled?

But the memory of those silver eyes was stuck to the inside of my eyelids.

Shaking my head, I sped up, pushing my Ducati to her limits. The wind pulled at my braid, and the cold night air hit my face.

I was almost calm. Almost.

Then the moon slid out from behind a cloud, fat and low, the color of old bone. And I saw it. In the corner of my left eye, it flickered between the trunks like a film reel skipping frames.

A wolf.

Bigger than any wolf I've ever seen. Shoulders even with my handlebars, black as crude oil, racing flat-out beside me.

Not on the road, but in the trees, twenty feet off the asphalt, moving at my speed as if it was nothing.