Chapter 2 — Found You (1)

I woke up in a bed that cost more than my degree.

That was the first thought. The second thought was: I’m not in my apartment, and the third was: there’s a monster standing at the end of the bed watching me like I’m a breakfast that’s been ordered.

I sat up so fast I got vertigo, and the monster — the Wolf King, the shadow, the kneeling glacier-man from the Hollow — didn’t move. He stood at the foot of the bed, arms crossed, coat gone, wearing a black sweater that did obscene things to his shoulders, watching me with those moon-silver eyes.

“Good morning,” he said, in a voice that should have come with a smoke alarm.

I checked my clothes. Still mine. Checked my pulse. Fast. Checked the room — floor-to-ceiling windows, a skyline I recognized as the Spire District, and a door that was ajar.

The door was ajar.

“Okay,” I said, swinging my legs out of bed, because I had exactly one speed and it was reckless. “Great. Thanks for the kidnapping, the bed was nice, the floor’s probably nice too, goodbye.”

I walked for the door.

I made it maybe four steps before the air changed and he was there — not between me and the door, but behind me, close enough that I felt the heat of him before I felt the presence, close enough that his voice landed directly on the back of my neck.

“I didn’t let you out.”

“You don’t have to let me out,” I said, without turning around, because I was not going to let a monster see that my hands were shaking. “I’m not a prisoner. I’m a citizen. I have a shift in —” I checked my phone, which was dead, “— some hours. I have a cat. I have a landlord who will report me missing just for the fun of the paperwork. You kidnapped the wrong girl.”

“You’re not the wrong girl.”

“That’s what every kidnapper says.”

Silence. Then, from behind me, a sound I absolutely did not expect: a low, rough huff of amusement. It was like hearing a mountain laugh.

“You’re afraid of nothing,” he said. “I find it exhausting.”

“I’m afraid of plenty,” I said, finally turning. “I’m afraid of my student loans. I’m afraid of the IRS. I’m afraid of werewolf landlords who evict tenants for emotional reasons. You, though?” I looked at him — really looked, at the thousand-year-old monster standing in a sweater in a penthouse that probably had a helipad — and I shrugged. “You’re just a big dog with a bedtime problem.”

The temperature dropped.

The windows hummed. I watched the glass vibrate, watched the city lights smear, and realized — too late, way too late — that I had just said the wrong thing to a predator.

His eyes weren’t silver anymore. They were black again, that bottomless-well black, and the air got heavy, and I took one step back and hit the wall.

He didn’t move fast. That was the worst part. He moved like the idea of moving, and then he was in front of me, and his hand was on my throat — not squeezing, just there, thumb on my pulse the way mine had been on his, and the symmetry of it made my breath catch.

“A dog,” he repeated. Soft. Almost gentle. The way a knife is gentle.

“A metaphor,” I said, through the pulse hammering under his thumb. “I’m a bartender. Everything is a metaphor. I called a three-hundred-pound bear ‘good boy’ tonight and he didn’t eat me, so clearly my system works.”

“Your system,” he said, “worked on every beast in the Hollow. It worked on bears and hounds and serpents and a gargoyle who’d been mid-sunbathe. It worked on everything with a pulse.” His thumb traced my pulse point, slow, deliberate, and I felt my power reach for him — that tide, that gravity, that stupid body of mine that was apparently built for exactly this. “But I am not a beast you tamed, Lila Cross.”

I went cold. “How do you know my name?”

“The same way I know you’ve been hiding in this city for four years. The same way I know you calm things because you can’t stand the noise, not because you’re kind. The same way I know —” his head tilted, and the black of his eyes flickered with something almost like wonder, “— that you felt me coming before I touched the city limits. You’re the only one who ever has.”

My hand was on his chest before I knew I’d moved.

My own stupid, traitorous hand — pressed flat against the black sweater, against the heartbeat under it — and I felt the storm in him lean into me, like a starving thing at a window. And the worst part wasn't the power. The worst part was that I leaned back.

“Let me rephrase,” I said, and my voice came out wrong — low, warm, unfamiliar. “What do you want?”

“I want you to understand the rules,” he said. “Not the ones you’ve been living by. The real ones.”