Chapter 15 · Let the Monster Through

"You want me to trust you?" I'm standing three feet from Kael and it feels like staring into a furnace. "Your people just put a bomb collar on my brother."

"Selene's people." His voice is flat. "Not mine."

"Same money. Same building." I can still hear the countdown in my head. Ten seconds. Milo's face when the shock hit. "You let her walk in here and—"

"I stopped her." He takes a step forward. I don't move. "I could've let the collar finish. I didn't."

"Oh, so I owe you now?" My hands are shaking. I ball them into fists. "That how this works? You save him so I forget you're the reason he was on that block in the first place?"

Kael's jaw tightens. The black veins crawling up his throat pulse once, slow and deliberate. "You came to my auction. You broke my wards. You stabbed my mark with your mother's lighter and tied yourself to a curse you don't understand." He stops two feet away. "Don't pretend you're the victim here."

"I'm not pretending anything." I can feel the heat coming off him.