Chapter 29 · Keys to the Inner Cage

Chapter 29: Keys to the Inner Cage

"You're bleeding again." Kane's thumb pressed flat against my collarbone, right over the bruise shaped like his own mouth. "Right where I marked you."

"It's not bleeding. It's healing wrong because you keep pressing on it." I knocked his hand off. The night cage smelled like it always does after a trial — sweat, old rust, and underneath that, him. Cedar and gun oil. My body still hadn't forgiven me for liking it.

He didn't step back. He never steps back. "Seventy-two hours till Silas walks this floor," he said. "I need you not falling apart on my watch."

"Your watch." I laughed, short and ugly. "I didn't sign up to be on anybody's watch, Voss."

"You signed up the second your scent hit this cage." His eyes dropped to my throat, slow, deliberate, the kind of look that should've made me step away and instead glued my feet to the floor. "You want to pretend that's not true, go ahead. Doesn't change the mark."

I hated that he was right. I hated more that I'd stopped hating it as much as I should.

He moved past me toward the back wall —