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small blade of the river, rich earth and grass. She hurried toward it, knowing there wasn’t much time. He would be there soon.
    She didn’t smell him because his injection regimen kept him from leaving a scent shifters could track, but she could feel him. It was a calculated risk, leaving Tate unprotected. She’d counted on the obsession, the anger that she’d dared to accept a companion, to draw him out. As she entered the glade, a spot that would have been beautiful if it weren’t for the pain that was about to fill it, she closed her eyes to gather her courage.
    Don’t go blank. Do not go blank. It had been happening lately, no matter how she struggled against it. The past few months, her will to fight had been waning. Weakening under the strain, like the rest of her body. Instead, the fear was getting the better of her. Whenever he came too close, she began to freeze up—sound faded, her fingertips growing numb until that numbness took over every part of her. For those moments lately, she became voiceless, motionless, until he disappeared back into the shadows.
    She flexed her fingers, shaking her head to clear it of the fear. She didn’t have the luxury of hiding in her mind this time. She had to find a way to buy time. To shield Tate from a fate he had no idea was already stalking him.
    You can protect one more. You can do it. Just like Laurel. You can protect one more. The Underground can not lose a general.
    Not giving herself a chance to think further than that, she bowed her head, shivering as she stared at the grass at her feet. Her heart beat out a terrified chant her mind couldn’t stop repeating.
    Don’t let him kill me. Don’t let him kill me…
    She didn’t know who she prayed to anymore, the small bits of faith she’d once been taught left in tatters, but as she shuddered and waited, the prayers repeated without ceasing.
    Don’t let him kill me. Don’t let—
    Pain exploded in her throat, an icy, relentless grip nearly flattening her windpipe even as it shoved her body down hard enough to whiten her vision in a flash of hurt.
    Suddenly, he climbed over her, hand still around her neck, straddling her waist, sinking them both into the mud beneath the grass. She looked up at the face that wasn’t a face, not at all surprised by the forbidding mask there. That visage was all she’d ever known of him. Glass-smooth black, with three thin vertical slats where his mouth should be. Two different-sized glass optics covered his eyes, both of them cold and unmoving. The left one formed an oval bubble slightly above the surface of the mask and the right protruded out from a black metal ring, soundlessly turning and focusing as he moved. He blended into the night like smoke, able to hide anywhere. A walking nightmare.
    A nightmare that had just sunk to new levels of fear.
    She blinked, disbelieving, as her hands grasped his wrist, instinctively pulling at them for air. Cold skin, paper dry but frigid, flexed tight beneath her fingers. Her eyes widened ’til they hurt. His hands were bare…
    He’d never touched her skin to skin. Never.
    He leaned down into her face, his voice forming digitized whispers of rage though the hard mask remained smooth and expressionless.
    “He touched you.” He pounded her into the mud again, punctuating his words with violence. “ No one touches what’s mine! ”
    Pain speared across her shoulders, the back of her head, but all she could do was hold on and wait for it to be over.
    Someday, you’re going to pay for this. On my life, you will pay , she thought, even as she wiped vengeance from her mind. Hate served no purpose here. The general—the Underground—could not die. If that required sacrifice, so be it. He would strangle her until his sadistic mind deemed it enough, but her mind was whirring again, seeking and disregarding option after option before he deprived it of too much oxygen. No matter what, she had to make him stop. A dead woman protected