Pounding. Throbbing. Oh fuck, that’s my head.

I sat up slowly and rubbed my eyes, disoriented and expecting to see, but it was pitch-black. It smelled musty and dank like being too close to water, and there was also something strong like body odor—like really, really bad body odor. The floor was hard like metal and had big corrugations. Was I in some kind of giant metal box?

Something swished, like shuffling against the floor, and I knew I wasn’t alone. Fear crawled through my body, spindly legs tapping on my veins, creeping along my bones like an unwanted bug. I froze, not wanting whoever was in here to know I was awake.

“I’m Leanna.” I jumped at the feminine voice.

“Shut up, Leanna,” another said. “Don’t draw attention to us.”

“No one is coming for us,” Leanna snapped. “They don’t even come to let us piss. They barely even feed us.” That was what the strong smell was—excrement. Oh God, where am I?

“Hi.” I looked around. “Do you know where we are?” Someone cried at my question, a third girl.

“We’re on our way to slavery, honey,” Leanna said, so easily that I had to blink a few times, had to take a few breaths, because I couldn’t quite believe it. Her tone was too gentle, too sweet, like she was saying we were on our way to church camp.

Another few minutes passed in silence, eyes never adjusting to the darkness. There was no way for them to do so—there wasn’t even a sliver of light. Finally I asked, “But do you know where we are?”

“No.”

I sat back, letting that sink in. Gabby had been right when she said the men were coming to take me to The Institute. For all I knew, I was on the opposite side of the world.

Eventually my eyes adjusted as much as they could, but everything was still fuzzy and gray. I couldn’t make out features. Hair color, eye color, skin color, that was impossible to see. I could only see shapes, stop bumping into people. Quiet whispers started up, some in a different language, but no one talked to me. I was alone with my thoughts, alone to think about Anteros.

About Gabby.

Anteros and I existed in a world of our own. It was dark and dangerous and dirty and fucked up, and when we were together, no one else existed but us. Except people did exist, and now Gabby was dead because of me.

A few minutes later, I talked to Leanna. Some people preferred their own corner. Some people preferred silence. Some people preferred to cry. It was how they coped, and that was fine. Me, I really liked talking to her. It took my mind off how I was about to be shipped across the sea to some ambiguous place called The Institute and sold, my identity taken from me.

I went into massive debt to save you. Hundreds of millions of dollars to keep you out of the paws of slavers. I fucked up my entire goddamn life for you.

As I sat in this smelly, black box, Anteros’s words played on a loop in my mind. I couldn’t help but think what a fool I’d been.

So yeah, talking helped.

“I actually grew up in Ohio,” Leanna said. “I came to New York for a fresh start. I had big dreams, you know?” She sighed as if remembering.

“I do,” I said.

“What’s your story?” she asked.

“It’s…” I struggled with where to start. “It’s long.” I thought again about what Anteros had said to me about The Institute, about my contract. I hadn’t wanted to believe him. I hadn’t wanted to believe it could be worse than when I’d sold myself to him, but he’d said there were men who took pleasure in pain, men who would keep me in a cage—a literal cage.

The smell of shit and piss filled my nostrils as the steady sound of crying echoed in the box. I opened my mouth to tell Leanna what was going to happen, but closed it. I was certain the reason these women were crying was because they were mourning the life they’d had, not the one they would have. I didn’t want to burst that bubble.

“I get it,” she said. “I was in love…” Her whisper became nonexistent for a beat. “At least, I thought I was. And now I’m here. Because of him.”

“Leanna…” I wasn’t sure what to say. It sounded eerily similar to my situation.

“Isn’t it fucked up that I still love him? At least, I still hurt for him. I can’t really separate the two. It always hurt with him, and I thought that was love.”

“Someone who loves you won’t put you here,” some other girl shouted from the opposite side. She was the same girl who’d told Leanna to shut up, but I still didn’t know her name. “That’s not fucking love, Leanna. Get that through your thick fucking skull.” Angry, furious arguing erupted. Every girl in the box started yelling. It was a small, contained space and the voices echoed. It was too loud, and it gave me a headache. Even as everyone argued, I couldn’t stop thinking about what had started it.

Someone who loves you won’t put you here.

I sighed and put my head between my knees. Anteros never put me here. He’d destroyed his career to keep me from The Institute. Destroyed his life. But in the process, he destroyed me. I understood what Leanna said; I got it. It didn’t matter if it wasn’t love, because I hurt for Anteros in a way so pure and agonizing that I was marked forever by it. Any other love attempted on my heart would feel like hollow echoes in comparison.

The yelling echoed until a harsh crank—the crate door grinding against the metal bottom—silenced everyone. Yellow light oozed inside. I’d become so used to the dark that even the feeble parking lot lights hurt my eyes.

A man stood in the opening, his figure nothing but a shadow. I thought he might be there to help, give us food, let us piss outside the crate. Something like that.

“Shut the fuck up!” he yelled.

* * *

“Not so loud now, huh?” the man who’d opened the container called over his shoulder.

I hated him.

We filed single file behind him and he occasionally yelled threats, names like cunt or whore. He probably thought it made him powerful, but there wasn’t any power in threatening women who had nothing, who were scared, who’d been tormented.

I recognized where we were now—the docks, just a few blocks down from Anteros’s warehouse, and where the Wolves had met their demise. I furrowed my brow trying to piece it all together. I’d actually gotten a glimpse of someone briefly and recognized him from The Catacombs, so I knew we’d been taken by Lucia’s men, but we were outside of Anteros’s warehouse. It didn’t make sense.

There was one other man with us, and he used the barrel of his gun to poke into our backs, to keep us moving. He was awful too, sneering and rude.

It was freezing outside, and they didn’t give us any new clothes. Loose gravel crunched painfully beneath my feet. That mixed with the light snowfall meant my feet were red and burning badly. I was still covered in Gabby and the man from the gas station’s blood, and I desperately needed a shower. The other women were like me—hair a ratted mess and smelling awful.

“Have you done this before?” I asked Leanna when we stopped a few yards away from a big freight boat loaded with containers. Shadows stuttered across our path, broken only by fiery orange lights.

“No,” Leanna whispered. “No, this is new.” I had to crane my neck as far as it would go to see the top of the huge vessel. This wasn’t going to end well. No sooner had I thought that then one of the men grabbed a girl and dragged her away by her blonde hair.

“No, please,” she said, reaching for her ratty tresses, and I realized it was the same girl who’d yelled at Leanna.

“Tucker,” warned the man who’d opened the container.

“They’re gonna be whores anyway,” Tucker, sneered. When he spoke, his lip curved in a smile that made my stomach curl. His lips were dry, cracking and bleeding. “May as well sample the product before it gets spoiled.” I was frozen, wanting to do something as they argued with each other about whether or not to rape us.

“The boat’s not even ready to leave,” Tucker argued. “C’mon Lee, stop being such a fuckin’ pussy. You could get yourself a virgin, they’d never know.” Lee’s, eyes traveled to Leann, growing calculating, predatory.

She backed into me and I gripped her forearms to steady her. Lee reached out to Leanna but his arm froze midair, a sound stopping him.

“What was that?” Lee asked, whipping his thin neck around.

“I didn’t hear shit,” Tucker snapped. Jeans at his ankles, he bent the blonde girl over a stack of wood pallets. We all had to watch. Silent. Afraid that if we said nothing we were letting it happen, but afraid they would turn to us if we spoke. Tears cleared a fresh path down her dirty cheeks, but she made no sound. I couldn’t look away. It was different than the time the men exited the velvet curtain. This time I felt if I looked away, it would be saying what they did to her was okay.

Lee turned from Tucker to us, clearly debating what Tucker had said. Suddenly he snatched Leanna from the line and pulled her toward the darker part of the docks, where the conflagration of lamps ended. I reached for her wrist.

She was being sucked into shadow, and I couldn’t do anything about it.

The blonde girl screamed and I looked in horror to find Tucker had wound his hands around her neck. Just as he was about to do something irreparable to her, he was pulled off and thrown to a stack of crates. I couldn’t help the gasp that escaped me.

Anteros.

* * *

I was speechless as he emerged from the shadows, and so were the men—for about two seconds. Then Lee dropped Leanna’s wrist and lifted his gun with a shaky hand. If Anteros was worried, he didn’t let on. Anteros grabbed Tucker off the crates just as Lee fired, using him as a shield. Bullets penetrated Tucker’s chest, one, two, three—so many I couldn’t keep track. They ripped the man’s chest apart until he was shreds of meat. When Lee had to reload, Anteros tossed the useless, bloody Tucker to the ground and went for Lee. Before Lee could get his ammo ready, Anteros slammed his weapon against his nose. Blood spurted in all directions as Lee wailed.

A gun bulged against Anteros’s shirt and knowing him, I was certain he had a knife. He used none of those items. He tore into Lee, fists colliding with his jaw, his nose, his eyes. He absolutely ripped Lee apart. All the women covered their eyes, but I was mesmerized. When he finished, Anteros was covered in red up to his elbows, as if he’d dipped his arms into a bucket of paint.

An icy winter wind blew through the air, whipping Anteros’s shiny black locks in all directions. His eyes gleamed murder. I’d thought I’d seen Anteros angry, but he was transformed—a devil delivering retribution.

He hadn’t looked at me the entire time and when he finally did, his bluegreen gaze was filled with madness. Blood splattered across his body, the spots gleaming like rubies under the fiery light. The last time I’d seen him, I told him never to find me again. I told him to stay away, to either let me go or kill me. I wondered if he’d decided to end me after all.

He stalked toward me, eyes on fire. One arm gripped my waist, the other swung under my legs, and he lifted me with a purpose I didn’t dare defy. I opened my mouth to say something as he carried me away. What would happen to the other girls? We couldn’t just leave them.

Yet I knew there was no way to escape him. I was a fool for thinking I ever could.

I was afraid to move, afraid to breathe. I’d thought I knew him as the Beast. I’d thought I knew what the word meant in regard to him, but he was completely transformed. Fingers painful in their grip, jaw so clenched the muscles on his neck corded, everything rigid to the point of snapping—he was no longer man, but completely animal.

His hair was messy and he hadn’t bothered to push it out of his eyes. In a trance, I gently brushed the strands away. His eyes flashed to mine—hot, filled with a blaze of hell. I paused midair. What the fuck am I doing? Still, I pushed his hair behind his ear, needing to soothe some of his tension, feeling it as my own. My hand slid to caress the side of his face down to his beard and his stare returned forward. When I pulled my fingers back, the tips were stained red.

We wove in and out of giant shipping containers as he avoided Lucia’s men deftly, darkness our friend. He held me like I would disappear at any moment. I should have been terrified—Lucia’s men crawled around the docks like beetles—but Anteros was so sure of himself. I trusted that, at least. I trusted him to save me. In this world, he’d always done that.

We came to the warehouse—the warehouse where he’d first saved me from his Wolves and tethered me in the darkness. We didn’t enter through the front door because soldiers guarded it. They were lazy, though. One was asleep and the other was smoking a cigarette, playing on his phone.

He kicked the back door open and it ricocheted against the wall, echoing in the silence. Unintentionally, I gripped his forearm, scared that soldiers were going to come running, but nothing happened. It appeared abandoned.

I couldn’t see a thing, the dark was so dense, inky shadows licking our skin like a lover. He set me down slowly, still gripping my waist when my feet hit the floor. I could only feel him in the darkness—still so hard, so rigid.

I’d been nervous before, dreading the punishment for leaving. Now I wished we could go back to that agonizing walk. This stillness was so much worse.

It was certain.

It was tense.

I didn’t want to go back to how it had been. I didn’t want to go back to the lies between us, but I knew now I couldn’t escape him. My heart cried for him. Beating, bruised, or broken—it would always find him.

But, God, why did we always have to hurt each other?

“I’m sorry.” His voice was hoarse and shredded. “I’m sorry, mio cuore.”

* * *

I didn’t know what to say. Anteros had only apologized to me one other time, and then he’d been shitfaced. I still couldn’t see him, but I could feel the heat of his breath against my lips, could smell the spicy, infuriatingly tempting scent of it, could hear his heavy, ragged, breathing.

Then he was gone.

The shick of a flame being lit sounded, and I could see him. It hurt, seeing him. It actually hurt. My chest ached. He didn’t walk back to me immediately, just stood next to the candle so that the flame rippled over him. In jeans, combat boots, a bloodied tank, and a black jacket, he was unequivocally lethal, but also beautiful. His wavy black hair was all messed up, his sharp jaw made even sharper by his defined yet wild beard. His eyes, though, they absolutely floored me. I didn’t know how I’d ever thought I could live without this man.

But that was the biggest lie of all.

Slowly he walked toward me until I had to tilt my head back to maintain eye contact. Our shadows flickered with the uneven dance of the flame. I folded my arms, needing to shield my heart. He placed a hand on my shoulder, lightly caressing the curve of it.

“I was protecting you,” he said after a few moments.

“I don’t need you protecting me,” I snapped. I wasn’t even angry at him, just upset by how little control I had when I was near him. It drained from my body like quicksand.

He raised an incredulous brow. “Clearly.” I wasn’t sure if he was referring to what had just happened or everything else. I wasn’t sure if it mattered.

My mind was a jumbled mess of hazy red emotion. I turned my back to him and focused on my surroundings, trying to regain whatever control I could. Anteros had his mainstream club here, but it had been closed since the war started. It was still beautiful, though. Even just with candlelight, I could remember the way women had spun from the ceiling.

“This only ends one way, Frankie,” he said to my back.

“You’re right,” I whispered after a few moments. I put my forehead to the wall. He was right, and I hated him even more for it. A hot, angry tear came to my eye. The awful truth was that he could hurt me, could tear me apart, and I would always come back to him. I would offer him all the pieces and beg him to rip them apart again and again.

“Is that what you want to hear?” I turned and faced him. “You have me. To use. To abuse. Forever.” I turned back, placing my palm on the wall with a jagged sigh. “I just wish you wouldn’t.” I felt him before I heard him—his arms around me, his heat at my back, his lips brushing my neck.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his kiss searing my flesh. “I’m sorry.” He kept saying it over and over again through the hot kisses he planted on my skin. My body and mind melted with the touch. He spun me around, and I wrapped my arms around him.

His tongue was hot in my mouth, the antidote to the poison he pushed. His teeth dragged my lower lip, biting and sucking. His hands came to either side of my face, seizing me.

“Frankie,” he said, grip tight. “Look at me.” His hands were still wet with blood, getting my face red and damp, but I didn’t care. I was still dirty with it from Gabby, from the guy at the gas station. We were dirty, fucked up—but somehow still the purest thing I’d ever known. I blinked away his kisses, focusing on him.

“Stop running away from me.” Glare fierce, he demanded it of my soul more than with words, and I couldn’t have said no even if I’d wanted to. When I nodded, he kissed me. Devoured me. Attacked me. His mouth merged with mine so ferociously I fell back against the wall painfully.

“You drive me crazy,” he said between kisses. “You’re beautiful. You’re maddening. Fuck, I’m addicted to you.” He broke to put his lips on my neck. “Do you realize what you do to me?” He didn’t give me a chance to respond, putting his lips back on mine.

I whimpered when he balled up the fabric of my ripped dress in one hand and palmed me with the other. He was wet with another man’s blood.

The idea thrilled me.

Disgusted me.

I couldn’t make up my mind, but I still wrapped my hands around his neck, still stuck my tongue wildly into his mouth.

“This cunt,” Anteros groaned. “Don’t you ever fucking take this away from me again.”

“Never,” I gasped.

“No more lies,” he growled. “I promise you.” He sucked my neck, deliriously working his lips and tongue on the skin, but his words stilled me. No more lies—I had to fucking tell him about my sickness. With all the strength I could muster, I pushed him off me.

I needed to get it out quickly, but I was still so scared. After everything we’d gone through, it was stupid to be afraid, but I fiddled with my dress all the same. My entire life people had left me for being sick. I didn’t want to add Anteros to the list.

“Anteros I have to tell you—” I stopped. He waited patiently, eyes drawn in that concerned, narrow way unique to him. Shadow and flame hardened and softened him all at once. He was so breathtaking and unfair in his beauty. I looked down, focusing on the silver fabric of my dress juxtaposed against my dirty, bloody fingers.

With a deep sigh, I met his stare. “I’m sick, I’m still sick. I’ll always be sick.”

The crease in his eyebrow deepened. “What are you telling me?”

“I’ll always be sick,” I whispered. “I just spent yesterday unable to leave my bed. Sometimes it’s longer. It happens occasionally and there’s no fixing it. I’m not going to die or anything, but I’ll be sick for the rest of my life.” With a sound low in his throat, he pushed me hard against the wall. His eyes were raging, bluegreen pits of undecipherable emotion.

I fucking knew it.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have told you. I know this changes things.” I tried to disentangle myself, but he pinned me, flattening his palms on the wall on either side of my face.

“Foolish girl,” he said, planting his lips on mine for a harsh kiss. “Still thinking that anything you do or say could affect how I feel about you. If only you would stay the fuck still and let me love you.” He pressed his body deep into mine, heating up all the cold parts of me.

“What?” My breath hitched when he put his face into my neck.

“You were alone. Alone,” he growled against the curve where my neck and shoulder met. “No one was there to help you. Stop running from me and let me take care of you.”

“I—”

“Don’t you ever fucking do that again,” he interrupted.

“Don’t you ever fucking lie to me again,” I countered. Our eyes locked. I wouldn’t back down from this, no matter how furious he was.

He exhaled. “Never.”

“I can’t go through that again,” I whispered.

“You won’t have to,” he said. When I didn’t lessen my glare, his eyes narrowed and he asked, “Do you believe me?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered truthfully. “I don’t know how I can trust you again.” Anteros gripped my skull, turquoise depths swirling as he searched my eyes. They were hard like stone, but beneath the guard he put up, he was raw. With another exhale, Anteros pushed off me and turned away, running a hand through his dark hair.

“There is only one thing you don’t know about me,” he said. “And then there will be no secrets left between us.”