Black Beast
response—she hadn't expected one—but she heard another crackle, and this time, it came from right behind her. She could hear him breathing, close enough to touch. She hadn't been able to smell him in time because the residual magic had overloaded her senses, whiting them out.
     
    She realized this, even as he grabbed her wrists and snapped two silver bangles around them and crushed her body against his. The silver started to burn instantly. The pain shot through her wrists and muscles, sapping her strength, seeping into her body like a neurotoxin.
     
    Her gorge rose. Silver was poison. A terribly slow-acting one, but poison nonetheless. You could keep a shape-shifter in silver shackles for years before it finally killed her. A fact she was sure her assailant knew well.
     
    “Catherine Pierce?”
     
    The voice was deep, husky, with a whispered lilt of an accent. Whispered right into her ear. He was holding her far too closely. She could feel his breath tickling her throat, dangerously near her pulse. Gasping, she jerked out of his grip, twisting around to knee him in the gut.
     
    But the silver rendered her weaker, and clumsy. He dodged her attack, and she could sense his fury. Power arced from him to crack her across the face like a slap as he reached out for her again.
     
    Catherine growled and brought her cuffed hands up to hit him squarely beneath the jaw, hard enough to knock his own head back. She heard his teeth connect with a sharp click, and a curse that suggested that he'd bitten his own tongue. She wished he'd bitten it right off.
     
    The witch, as if reading her thoughts, rasped out words in a language she did not know, in a voice hoarse with anger, and all the air left her lungs in an instant as he created a vacuum around her far more effective than any plastic bag.
     
    She couldn't breathe. She couldn't
breathe
. He had stolen her breath, and she was dying—
     
    He slid a gloved hand beneath her chin, ignoring her spasms. He was dressed all in black, in jeans and a robe that had some sort of cowl. Fabric was swathed over his mouth, hiding his face, muffling his voice. Only his eyes were visible. Eyes she wished she had let the hawk peck out.
     
    He is the reaper
, thought Catherine.
He is death.
     
    Would he be hers?
     
    “Answer the question, shifter slut,” he said, as the black spots began to dance before her eyes.
     
    It took her several agonized seconds to understand, and then several more to remember what the question was. Brain-starved, faint, on the verge of consciousness, it was all she could do to bring her head down in a nod.
     
    And then—air, blessed air.
     
    She sucked in a breath, stumbling back a few steps as the air reached her lungs and her brain and left her feeling dizzy from the sheer force of her replenishment.
     
    When she remembered how to speak, she turned on him. Her voice was hoarse, and for that she was grateful; it masked the trembling. “You—fucking—bastard.”
     
    And then she winced. The magic radiating from his body was so bright that it hurt to look at him.
     
    As if he were an angel, or a god.
     
    “Show some respect,” he said coldly.
     
    But this witch—was no angel. “Fuck you.”
     
    His eyes dropped to her damp shirtfront, and a sudden chill reminded her that she still wore nothing beneath it. The look he gave her when he met her gaze once more was loaded with irony—and something else, something that she couldn't quite catch, but that scared her far more deeply than his anger had.
     
    “You're probably infected with parasites.”
     
    Who was he trying to convince?
     
    “Let me go.” She had to distract him. This witch was broken inside, full of shards as jagged as shattered glass. “I have your scent. I'll find you. And then I'll kill you.”
     
    He shook his head slowly. That look still hadn't left his face. In a voice so low she had to strain to hear him, the witch said, “It's considered an act of treason to threaten a

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