Savage Heart (Wreck & Ruin 2)

Five years before

Blood coats my hands, sticky and cooling. The body lays before me, another target given to me by the Syndicate. I didn’t ask what he had done to earn their wrath, I simply didn’t care. I did the job, and I did it quickly. Leaving him where he lies in the middle of his living room floor, I call clean up to deal with the mess and head out to the car, using an old cloth inside to wipe my hands the best I can.

I’d already been gone too long, Isobel would question it. She didn’t get to leave her cell and yet I did. She hadn’t asked yet, but I knew it wouldn’t be long before she did.

She was starting to trust me and the more time I spent with her, the more I realized that she did truly belong with me.

She was a missing puzzle piece I hadn’t realized I had been searching for my entire life. The darkness doesn’t seem so dark when she’s with me, the pain inside my soul is eased. She is mine, in every single way.

I drive swiftly back to the Syndicate headquarters, leaving the car in the forecourt for one of their employees to deal with. Clayton tries to grab me before I can get back to her, but I ignore him, the craving to be near her again far too demanding to ignore. I head through the door that will lead me down to the cells below the building, that disgusting scent making my gut churn but then her door comes into view and something inside me eases, knowing she’s just behind it.

Rolling my shoulders, I fall back into that person I’ve had to be in order to get her trust and stumble through, pushed by invisible hands. The door slams shut with a thud that reverberates through the room.

“Hunter!” Her voice is a balm on my soul and then her delicate arms are wrapping around my middle and her cheek is pressed to my spine. Her warmth caresses me and for a minute I’m frozen but then I reach up and wrap a hand around her forearm, soothing her. “You were gone for so long,” she sniffs, her voice thick, “I thought they’d done something to you.”

Twisting in her arms, I turn to face her, letting my own arms come around to hold her close to me. It was an intimate interaction that I didn’t know how to respond to. But I let my body lead me, let my soul reach out to brush tender fingers against hers, knowing that this was right.

“Nothing would keep me from you,” I admit, and no truer words had ever left my mouth. I’d have to be dead and buried six feet under for anyone to keep me from her.

“These people,” she whispers, a crack in her voice that has me looking down to see fat tears running over her cheeks, “They’ll do anything, and I’d never know. You could be taken.”

I grip her face, forcing her to look up at me. Her vibrant blue eyes glisten with her tears, her lip trembles, “Nothing and I mean nothing, will ever keep me apart from you, Snow.”

The blood on my hands is a stark contrast to her pale skin, but she doesn’t appear to notice that, not when she stares up at me like I’ve just hung the moon.

I snap. I’ve held my leash tightly these past few weeks, held it to keep myself in check but that rope snaps and I kiss her.

I kiss her hard and brutally, my tongue sweeping into her mouth. She opens for me, letting me kiss her, letting me claim her. How any woman could after what she had been subjected to baffled me. Her tongue duels with mine, her fingers biting into my forearms, my hands cupping her face to tilt her head back, letting me in further.

I break the kiss and rest my brow on hers, “It’s you and me, Snow.”

She nods in agreement.

Later that night we lay in the small cot, the blanket wrapped around Isobel’s frame and her head resting on my shoulder.

“Will you tell me about it?” She asks quietly, the darkness so thick it’s as if you could reach out and touch it.

I hated that she was afraid of the dark and that’s all she’d known.

I’d set the world on fire a thousand times over just so she could bask in the light.

“What do you want to know?”

“Why are you here? You’re not like us.” She then adds quietly, “Like me.”

I shake my head and then realize she can’t see the motion.

With me, I’d lived in the darkness, shadows were my friends and the abyss my family. The light never touched me where I was, and I liked it that way.

“No,” I tell her, “I’m not like you.”

“Why do they have you, Hunter?”

It hadn’t seemed to occur to her yet that since I’d come into her miserable life no one had dared touch her. She hadn’t put those pieces together.

“I have skills they require.”

“What kind of skills?”

“I kill people for them.”

For a long time, silence settles between us, “You kill them? Like an assassin?”

“Yes.”

“They don’t use you? Like that, I mean?”

“No, Snow. I owe a debt and until it’s paid, I will remain here.”

The lie is bitter but necessary. She had to trust me. I couldn’t let her hate me and if she knew what I was and what I had done, it would all be over.

“So, you’re just their assassin then?”

“Yes.”

“Couldn’t you just run?”

“I probably could,” I admit, “but they’d find me and, what about you? It’s obvious I’ve grown an attachment, they’d only use you against me.”

“Then let them, Hunter,” I feel her lift herself on her elbows and assume she’s looking down at me though the darkness would make it impossible for her to see, “You should run and don’t look back. Leave me, and this place, and run.”

“I would never run. I’m not a coward.”

“A coward!?” She hisses, “running wouldn’t make you a coward, Hunter, it would make you a survivor.”

“Running would mean subjecting you to horrors like you’ve never known, I would never do that.”

“You shouldn’t stay because of me,” she says.

I don’t answer, instead I gently coax her back down, wrapping an arm around her shoulders to hold her close.

“Sleep, Snow, you need to rest.”

She doesn’t fight me, she settles against me, holding one arm around me as her body relaxes into mine.

“I’m glad you stay, Hunter,” she whispers sleepily, “as selfish as that may seem.”

I kiss her head and don’t answer, gently whispering my fingers down her spine to help her off to sleep. If she ever found out who I was and what I do, willingly, she’d never forgive me.

I wasn’t prepared to let her go, ever, she was mine, now, then, forever, even if she didn’t realize that yet. Her and me, we had been made for each other. I didn’t believe in God or fate or anything other than this mortal Hell, but somewhere along the line, she had been created as my perfect match.

For as long as I breathed, for as long as my dead heart beat, she would be mine.

And I was hers.

All that I was and all that I had belonged to her, and she could do with it what she willed. I wouldn’t stop her, I would take her pain and her love, her sorrow and her joy and breathe it into my lungs as if it were the very air that sustained our lives.

She relaxes further into me, body going limp as sleep claims her, and I let my hand smooth down the back of her hair, the strands soft beneath the rough callouses on my fingers. She lets out a soft sigh, snuggling into me further.

She was a princess in the arms of a monster.

A hunter.

But she’d never be safer.

There wouldn’t be a single soul on this earth I’d let harm her, there would be no more men coming into this cell, no more torture or abuse.

I would burn this entire world to the ground if it meant keeping her safe. And soon, soon, I would get her out.