If we fear a thing too much, for too long, it is inevitable that we manifest it.

She takes a hesitant step forward. Then another. Coming to stand at my side, she touches my cheek, her gaze pleading. “You didn’t lose me in the wreck. I’m right here, Kallum.” Her words are a gentle whisper as she gives voice to the destructive fear annihilating my mind.

Hung on her watery gaze, I say, “I won’t lose you.”

“Then don’t lose me.” Fear brims her delicate features.

There’s an undercurrent of threat there, and I can taste her heartbreak as she delivers that threat. It stings my lungs, the sweetest, aching pain as I breathe her in.

“The man who supports his madness with murder is a fanatic,” she quotes Voltaire, trying to seduce me with her reason. Then she places her hand on my arm, an urgent appeal to release the man in my clutch.

“The lover’s whisper, irresistible—magic to make the sanest man go mad.” Homer’s words cleaved from my soul. “You are my madness, Halen. I am maddeningly, fanatically in love with you.”

“Kallum…” Her voice cracks, a tear falls free, and I see it in a matter of a blink, all that is being torn away, all that is being lost.

A dangerous man is a mad one with nothing to lose.

“You’ve always known who I am,” I tell her. “You just prefer the illusion.” I choke up on his head. “Sometimes, we just need the sharp snap of clarity to awaken us.”

I keep her teary gaze trapped in mine, then deliver one hard, fast twist.

The bone-snapping crunch of his neck breaking echos through the chasm before his body falls slack to the earth.

Halen’s emotions clash in a vortex stronger than any storm, and I lick the saccharine remnants from the air, tasting her, whetting my appetite.

“You killed him,” she says, shock infusing her breathy words.

“If you didn’t want him dead, then you wouldn’t have said so much that he couldn’t know.”

I cast a glance down at his unmoving body. I should’ve torn his spine from his neck to really send a fucking message.

He wants her—and I’m making damn sure he knows I won’t let that happen.

She tears the plastic evidence sleeve off the knife and points the blade at me, and my blood is fire. “This is what you want. Madness, mayhem. Chaos⁠—”

“Those are listed on my résumé.” I step over the body as I pry my necktie loose.

Homer understood the struggle in having a muse. Once invoked, our muse is free to use her vessel however she pleases, and we are but empty and fallow as we wait to be inspired, unable to even take a breath until graced by her divine beauty.

Halen retreats another step, her foot placement slipping farther down the steep incline. “Kallum, please. I have to get help. You can’t come with me.” She looks pointedly at the ankle monitor.

“Fuck, you really do lie so pretty.”

Dr. Keller is long gone, hauled ass to the next town by now.

Hernandez is injured, maybe even dead.

The backup feds are still another five minutes away, if they were even called.

With a deep grunt, I kneel and snap the pin on the GPS monitor wrapping my ankle. The strap falls loose, and I fling the tracking device out across the ridge.

As I rise to my feet, I lock Halen in my predatory gaze. “If you run from me this time, sweetness, you better run fast.”

The rush of her fear nearly levels me.

Every twin flame gives chase at some point, and my muse doesn’t disappoint.

She runs.

I roll my sleeves up my forearms and trace my fingers over the sigil branding my flesh, then ritually spin the ring around my thumb, giving little Halen a head start before I pursue. I’ve been chasing her for a long, long time.

It’s about fucking time I catch her.

Homer knew one other truth: We men are wretched things.

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12

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PRIMAL MAN

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KALLUM

The lust for the hunt always rivals the kill.

At my base core, I’m a primal beast that relishes the chase.

And Halen is by far my favorite prey.

Gazing into the dense thicket of marsh grass and trees, I breathe in deeply, pulling Halen’s intoxicating scent into my lungs. Her emotional arousal is goddamn delectable.

My inner beast is salivating.

The liberation I feel from the tracking monitor stirs my blood into a frenzy. My heart rate climbs with each second that passes. The farther away she gets, the hungrier I become, the deeper the desire to bring us together.

The low rumble of thunder builds slowly, drawing out the tantalizing buzz in my veins until all I can feel is her dark elements tangled with mine, a sinfully wicked seduction as the kill heightens my arousal—how I know it heightens hers.

That’s what my fearful muse is truly running from. Halen is always trying to outrun that darkness whispering in her ear. But today, there will be no escape.

I relent to the carnal demand to give chase and bound toward the tree line.

My feet pound the earth in pursuit as I track Halen’s clear footprints. Adrenaline surges the chambers of my heart, dopamine floods my neuro pathways, and I swear if I catch her too soon, I’m going to make a mess of my meal.

Crossing into the deep brush, I swipe the viny branches to clear my path and push into the coppice of pines and willows. The leafy sprays give off a trace of wintergreen as I brush past, my steps light now as I strain to hear the sounds out of place in the marsh.

My little twin flame will give herself up, because deep down, she wants to be caught.

Plato may have framed the origin, but the terminology is relatively novel—a mystic belief in the union of dual flames and their stages once reunited.

While I spent the vast majority of my time in the yearning stage, made obvious by my years of pining for my muse, once Halen and I were thrust together, we accelerated through the others, raging hotter than a holy fire.

The chase and surrender stage might as well be written in our stars. As the chaser, it’s my sole purpose to pursue my little runner until she’s thoroughly exhausted, where she’s forced to face her fear before she ultimately surrenders.

Fuck, her surrender will taste so sweet.

I don’t have to adopt a new age theology in order to appreciate the symmetry. Being open to new ideas is how one prevents repeating historical mistakes.

Like the day I yielded to my weakness and handed Halen the means to lock me away in a psychiatric hospital. Now, I’m much more cautious with what I let slip past my lips.

Her allegation of lies, while demoralizing, does little to deter my purpose. I have but one desire, one obsession, and I’ve sacrificed everything to obtain it.

The distinct snap halts my movements.

There’s a rustle of reeds, the telltale squelch of soggy earth being shifted, then Halen’s small gasp.

That’s all it takes, just the breathy cadence of her fear whispered through the canes, and I’m feral.

“You know what happens when the prey runs from the predator,” I say as I duck under the low-hanging sprays. “Are you provoking me on purpose? I’m hard just thinking about how you begged me for the pain, Halen.”

My gaze sweeps the high grass. I hold my breath and wait, my body humming with anticipation.

The alluring scent of her arousal invades my senses, and I close my eyes to taste her. Honeysuckle and clove settles at the back of my throat, the burn so good.

I undo the buttons along the placket of my black Oxford, the desire to feel the natural elements on my skin as demanding as my need to feel her skin against mine. My ethereal fairy creature is well suited here in this secluded wood, hiding from the hunter that wants to devour her.