Hunting Adeline (Cat and Mouse, #2)

by H.D. Carlton

I don’t know why I got tossed into this shit, but they need to take me out of this fucked-up salad of depravity; I don’t belong here.

Swallowing, I stay silent. If the creep expects me to give him my name as if we're in a fucking interview, then he can shove the IV pole up his ass.

I can’t help but marvel at the fact that the Society sacrificed their own people’s lives just to ensure that I would be caught. That speaks volumes. Not only am I a threat, I am catastrophic.

They still have Addie, and the rage is steadily churning beneath the surface. I’m going to burn the entire fucking world down until I find her, and I don’t care who gets burnt.

“Jesus, Zade!” My chest heaves and my vision becomes spotty, allowing me only snippets of my blurred surroundings. Four frightened nurses and Jay crowding me, eyes wide and faces pale as I stand before them with a nearly two-hundred-pound bed strapped to my back. I am… I am no longer a man—only a beast succumbing to primal instinct. I am annihilation.

"Quit acting like a fucking lunatic and get it together! Trashing a hospital isn't going to save her."

“Let your body heal, man. You’ll be useless otherwise. We’ll get him, and find where they took her the second you’re not broken anymore. You may be able to move now, but the next few days are going to hit hard, especially now that you walked around with a big-ass bed on your back. Your very injured back, might I add.”

There’s always a way out, little mouse. You just have to find it.

I failed Addie. And I’ll never let myself forget it. Not with the rose now carved over my heart.

Eventually, I’m going to fucking explode, and I promise I will burn this entire goddamn house down with me.

But I'm not their little mouse, and they are not Zade. And I will never succumb to them.

Oh my God. I’m living with nothing but psychopaths. I knew this but fuck me.

“Not only am I scary, baby, but I’m really, really angry. And when I’m angry, I’ll make them pray for Hell.”

“Sibby!” I shout exasperatedly. “Stop taking your clothes off, we are not having a fucking orgy!”

"I got it, baby girl,"

He has positively burnt down the world to find me, and he hasn’t stopped since.

"No, baby, it makes you strong.” He bends down, putting his face directly into mine. "I may own every breath in your body, but make no mistake, Adeline, you own mine, too. I am yours to command. To bend and break. To mold and manipulate. Do you think that makes me weak? Or do you think I'm strong enough to admit that even though my body can physically live on without you, I would never get my fucking soul back?”

"Without you, I will shatter. But with you, I am indestructible."

“You’ll always be safe with me, little mouse. Always.”

But this time, I’m just fucking annoyed. Sibby did what she always does and took shit a step too far. She decided it would be fun to play fucking frisbee with body parts or some shit,

And of course, during the two hours it took to dig and bury the bodies, she felt inclined to tell me every sordid detail of what her henchmen did to her. Or rather, what she did to herself. I let her talk and tuned out the parts I didn’t care to hear. Sibby’s never had real friends before, and despite how badly I don’t want to hear how she got railed up the ass, I refuse to set an example of friendship by silencing her.

“I don’t ever want to be free of you, Zade. Not in this lifetime, and not in all the ones that come after.”

“Someday soon, little mouse, you will not be able to see anything else. I will be the only villain in your story, and the only one who has the power to make you scream.”

She’s absolute perfection, and I will never get tired of showing her just how much I fucking worship her.

“I love you, Zade. Sometimes I can’t fucking stand it,” I say, my voice raspy and uneven. “But it was the only thing that kept me alive. You saved me. Even when we were apart, you saved me. And I hope to God you never stop hunting me.”

Fucking hell, he needs goddamn dick reduction surgery.

We’d haunt Parsons Manor together, and it’s undeniable how much I love the sound of that.