Stephen takes a step closer.
"You'resohandsome," I breathe, and the words almost choke me. "So rugged with all the…" I trail my eyes across his battered face. "...bruises."
I reach up with one hand and caress his stubbled cheek, reaching into the front of my pants with the other. Past the silicone cock, down to the knife strap around my thigh, curling my fingers around the hilt.
He's so lost in my eyes, he doesn't even notice me slipping my knife out of my pants and spinning it behind my back.
Stupid fucking alpha.
His hand rises to the cage door.
The brass lock clicks.
The door swings open.
Stephen stands in the gap, one hand on the gilded frame, his grossly swollen face soft with something possessive and sick.
"That's my girl," he murmurs, reaching for me. "Mysongbird."
I step into his arms.
My knee comes up.
I drive every ounce of force I can generate from my planted foot through my hip into the hardest, fastest strike I've ever thrown, and it connects directly with his cock.
Stephen doubles over with a snarl, already scrambling for the gun on his hip.
I drive my knife into his eye.
"CHIRP CHIRP, MOTHERFUCKER!"
Stephen screams.
I rip my knife free and fuckingrun.
CHAPTER 33
REX
The bullet is still in my fucking back.
I can feel it. Lodged between my shoulder blade and my spine, a white-hot coal buried in muscle that screams with every movement and I don't fucking care.
I don't care about the blood soaking through my shirt and jacket, hot and wet and spreading.
I don't care about the mask.
I don't have a mask.
My face is bare. The full horror show—melted cheek, exposed teeth, lidless eye—all of it open to the night air and the streetlights and anyone unfortunate enough to be in my path.
Let them look.
The only thing I give a fuck about is the thread.
That filament of bond stretching from my sternum into the dark, pulling me forward through the streets as literally as a chain on a dog. Faint and flickering butthere, and it leads somewherespecific, somewhere I know even if my conscious mind hasn't caught up.
Bells is alive.