“You’re sorry?” My chest felt as if it were caving in on me. “Which part are you sorry about? What happened between us? Or the fact that you failed to mention that you’re engaged?”
His jaw flexed once more. “All of it.”
My heart fissured into millions of pieces. I’d been a lot of things in my life, but I’d never been a mistake. I’d never been a mistake with the same person twice. What did my mom use to say when I was younger? “Fool me once. Shame on you. Fool me twice. Shame on me.”
“You don’t understand.” He glanced at me. “You cannot possibly understand—”
“Because I’m not a fae?”
His eyes met mine, and an eternity stretched between us as a wild array of emotions flickered across his face. And then it all went away as if he’d shut down whatever he was feeling. “Yes, because you are not like me. I am a King. I must have a Queen, and you… You’re a distraction. A weakness that I will not allow to be exploited.”
I jerked back a step. Deep, wounding hurt collided with fury. My legs knocked into the chair. Thrown off balance, I stumbled. Caden stepped toward me, reaching out.
“Don’t touch me!” The sound of my voice was shrill to my ears as I straightened myself. A burn crawled up the back of my throat and then entered my eyes. “Don’t ever touch me again.”
Caden—no, he wasn’t Caden. He was the King, and I shouldn’t forget that. The King pulled his hand back, and our gazes connected once more. The pressure in my chest continued to expand until it felt like something might burst.
And then words did break free of me. “I want to tell you I hate you. I want to tell you that I despise you, but you would know that it’s not true.”
He remained quiet, and a long moment passed between us as a hundred quick, in-complete thoughts flashed through my mind, forming all the things I thought I wanted to say to him.
But only one fully formed.
“I never once thought you were terrible for all the things you did while under the Queen’s spell. I hated that you held yourself responsible for things you had no control over. It killed me a little, but this….” A shudder racked me. “You did this. You led me on the first time, and you did it again. No, you didn’t make me any promises, but you know me better than most. You knew before yesterday that it was going to mean something to me. And you turned around and made me the other woman. You made me feel shame and regret, and for all of that, I think you’re terrible.”
The King closed his eyes.
Turning away from him, I picked up my purse and walked out of the room with my head held high, but my heart broken, and my body weighed down.
It was only when I left the room that I realized it was the same one we’d stood in weeks before when he’d carved out his first piece of me.
* * * *
The trip back home was nothing but a blur of trees and concrete, people and cars. Ivy called. Three times before I silenced my phone. I didn’t know if she was calling because she’d sensed that something had happened between…the King and me, or if she was calling about my hunting. Either way, I couldn’t deal with her at the moment.
I was strangely numb after I walked out of Hotel Good Fae and all during the ride home. Even as I pushed open the iron gate and walked toward my front door, I felt nothing. Or maybe I was feeling so much that it had overwhelmed my senses to the point where I couldn’t feel anything. Like I had reached some sort of internal meter where the gauge had been blown.
But my hands trembled as I unlocked the front door, and they shook as I placed my purse and keys on the foyer table.
I stood there for…I don’t know how long. Seconds? Minutes? I was supposed to be at work, but I didn’t think I could do that. Face Ivy. Miles.
Stiffly, I turned from the foyer and walked through the silent house into the living room. Dixon wasn’t scampering across the hardwood floors. Tink and Fabian weren’t there to distract me with movies or silly conversations. I swallowed, but my throat seemed to lock up. I forced myself to take a deep breath—
“I hear you’ve been looking for me.”
Heart jumping into my throat, I spun around.
A male stood a few feet behind me, brown hair clipped short, his cruelly handsome face just as I remembered. The faint smirk he wore twisted the scar that cut through his lip.
Aric.
Instinct kicked in. I sprang back—
He was horrifically fast and on me before I even had a chance to engage the iron cuffs. He caught my wrists, locking them behind my back as his other hand clamped down on my throat.
Seconds.
Within seconds, he had me.
“So, I thought I should come find you,” he said.
I twisted, but his grip tightened. My eyes widened as he lowered his mouth to mine. I knew what was coming. Oh, God, I knew what was—
Aric inhaled.
My entire body jerked as if a tether had been formed between us. I was hooked to him, deep in the very core of my being. My insides flayed as he fed. The pain was like icy fire, burning me from the inside out, and I couldn’t break free as it dragged me down into an abyss of nothing but searing coldness.
Chapter 8
I was cold.
That was the first thing I realized when I slowly drifted out of the black fog that consumed every part of my being.
Shivers skated up and down my body. I didn’t know I could be this cold. My skin was chilled to the bone, and icy dampness seeped through my dress. How…how could I be this cold? It had been chilly earlier, in the low sixties, but this felt as if I were lying in a mound of fallen snow.
Confusion swept through me as I tried to remember what I’d been doing before I…before I fell asleep. That was what’d happened, right? No. That didn’t make sense. I tried to open my eyes, but they were heavy and felt as if they were glued shut as cloudy images of my living room flickered through the fog in my mind. I’d been there…
What was going on?
I willed my eyes to open, but the concentration sent a sharp burst of pain bouncing around my skull. Wincing, I kept my eyes closed as the throbbing slowly dulled. Did I have an injury? That would explain the confusion and pain, but how did it happen? I was in my house, having…
I’d come home and…
Aric.
My heart rate kicked up as the lost memories crashed through the wall of nothingness and flooded me. He’d been waiting for me when I came home. He’d been so fast, on me before I even had a chance to scream or release my blades.
He’d fed on me.
Oh, God. That bastard had used me like I was a juice box. My lips tingled from the memory of his icy breath and the horror of the feeding that resurfaced. It had felt nothing like when Cad—when the King had done it. That had been orgasmic, but this…this had felt like frigid claws reaching deep into my very core, tearing through bone and tissue and yanking out what made me who I was. Now I remembered. The tide of pain had sucked me under into an abyss.
How much had Aric taken from me? Based on the way my head felt, more than enough.
I needed to get up. I needed to figure out where the hell I was, and then I needed to find that bastard and kill him a million times over.
Turning my head, I stopped suddenly when something hard bit into my neck like a frigid vise. My eyes flew open as I lifted my hand to my neck. Metal—cold and unforgiving—encircled my throat. I pressed my palm against the band, my fingers digging into the narrow space between it and my skin as I jerked upward and scanned the…