POV Natalie
“I need you alive,” Avery says, stepping into the moonlight like she’s delivering a death sentence instead of saving my undead ass.
I can’t help but smirk. “What a coincidence. Me too.”
That’s the last coherent thought I have before she’s on me like a fucking hurricane.
No warning. No dramatic buildup. One second I’m being clever, the next her blade is singing past my ear close enough to part my hair. I dodge left, she follows right, and suddenly we’re locked in this brutal dance that makes our previous encounters look like gentle foreplay.
Metal kisses claw with a sound like breaking glass. She’s faster than last time—angrier too. Her movements have this desperate edge that makes my dead heart do weird acrobatic shit in my chest.
I shove forward hard, slamming her into a tree with enough force to shake leaves loose. “Oops,” I say, going for casual while my pulse hammers against my ribs. “Didn’t see you there.”
Her elbow cracks against my jaw before the words finish leaving my mouth. Stars explode behind my eyes. “Getting cocky, Nightshade.”
I wipe blood from my lip, tasting copper and adrenaline. “Getting soft, mutt.”
But even as I’m talking shit, something’s different. This isn’t the calculated violence I was raised on. This is something raw and hungry and desperate. We’re not fighting to win anymore—we’re fighting to feel something real in a world that keeps trying to make us into weapons.
My blade slices across her shoulder, too shallow to do real damage. Her claws rake my ribs, too slow to be deadly. We’re both holding back and daring the other to notice, like the most fucked up game of chicken in supernatural history.
Then she does something that completely destroys my brain.
A sharp twist of her wrist catches me off guard. Steel slides across my ribs—hot, clean, precise. The gasp that escapes me isn’t from pain. It’s from how close she is now. Breathing hard. Eyes blown wide with something that definitely isn’t just battle fury. Sweat gleaming along her neck like she’s been carved from starlight and bad decisions.
We freeze.
I don’t flinch. She doesn’t retreat. We’re standing there like two predators who just realized they might be each other’s prey.
One heartbeat. Then another.
Then Avery does something that makes my entire worldview implode.
She raises her hand. Slow. Careful. Like she’s approaching a wild animal. Her fingers brush the cut she just made—not to hurt, but to feel. Just to fucking feel.
Every instinct screams at me to move, strike, disappear. Instead, I tense… then let her.
“You’re bleeding,” she says, voice too calm for someone who just carved me open.
“You cut me,” I reply, surprised by how quiet my own voice sounds.
Another beat passes. The forest holds its breath.
“You let me,” she murmurs, and there’s something in her tone that makes me want to either run or kiss her. Possibly both.
“I’m still standing,” I manage, because apparently my mouth has decided to be honest at the worst possible moment.
Silence again. Not the kind laced with violence. The kind thick with things we’re both too fucked up to say out loud. Her hand doesn’t drop. I don’t step back. This is closer than we’ve ever been without trying to murder each other.
And somehow, it’s infinitely more dangerous.
My brain finally kicks back online, screaming warnings about vulnerability and missions and all the ways this could destroy me. So I do what I do best.
I vanish.
Mist coils around the clearing like a sigh made of regret and terrible timing.
I don’t go far. Just enough to breathe without tasting her on every inhale, which is becoming a serious problem for my continued sanity.
Perched on a branch above where we were just—whatever the hell that was—I press one hand to my ribs. Blood still oozes slowly, but I barely notice. The sting is familiar. What’s not familiar is the burn her touch left behind. Not cruel. Not clinical. Just… curious. Like she wanted to understand me instead of dissect me.
That’s the problem with this whole situation. I don’t want to be understood. I’m supposed to be feared, mysterious, the nightmare parents tell their kids about. But when Avery touched me, I didn’t feel monstrous.
I felt human.
Which is probably the most terrifying thing that’s happened to me in fifty-three years of being dead.
I stare down at the forest floor, waiting. Hoping. Praying she won’t just leave, because my body might know how to fight but my heart is apparently staging a full-scale rebellion against everything I thought I knew about myself.
“I’m losing my goddamn mind,” I mutter, wiping blood with the back of my hand.
The fight replays in my head on loop. Every parry, every strike, every moment we should have gone for the kill—and didn’t. She looked at me like I wasn’t broken. Like I was something dangerous and beautiful instead of defective and wrong.
I hate it.
I also want more of it, which is probably going to get me killed.
Movement below catches my attention. Avery’s still there, standing in the spot where everything changed, looking up at the trees like she knows exactly where I’m hiding.
Fuck it. If I’m going to make catastrophically bad decisions, might as well commit.
I drop from the branch, landing silent as death behind her. “You know,” I say, voice carrying just enough amusement to hide the chaos underneath, “this whole enemies thing we’ve got going? It’s getting predictable.”
She turns, not startled. Like she was expecting me. “You have a better idea?”
“Maybe.” I step closer, close enough to see the pulse jumping in her throat. “Tomorrow night. Same place. We settle this properly.”
“Settle what?”
“Winner takes the loser back to their territory. No more games. No more dancing around whatever this is.”
Her eyes narrow. “And if I win?”
“Then you drag my ass back to Daddy Alpha and collect your gold star.”
“And if you win?”
I smile, all teeth and dangerous promises. “Then you come with me willingly, and we see how long you last in vampire territory.”
The silence stretches between us like a loaded weapon.
Finally, she nods. “Deal.”
“Deal.”
I start to turn away, then pause. “Avery?”
“Yeah?”
“Bring everything you’ve got. Because tomorrow night, I’m not holding back.”
Her smile is sharp enough to cut glass. “Good. Neither am I.”