Book Five: Chapter 77

It was the way Velvet wanted to be treated, and Abella already had it. She would be damned if she gave it up—not for anyone, not for anything. She braced herself against the chill air and the rustling of the forest around her.

“Do you have an asshole?” she asked, voice low but laced with venom, her eyes narrowing. “Because that’s where you can stick your offer.”

Those crimson eyes flashed for a heartbeat, a stark, unnatural gleam cutting through the shadows. Then the figure vanished. Abella immediately tensed, listening for the slightest sound—crunch of snow, rustle of bark, the subtle shift of air—but there was nothing. And yet, when the figure next spoke, his voice came from all directions at once, whispering into her mind as though he were inside her skull.

“We could have made this work,” he murmured, the words curling around her like smoke. “I could have