Chapter Eight - Run For Me

(The Devil)

“What…” he murmured under his breath, “…are you?” The question was not literal. He knew what she was—a mortal girl, offered to him like all the others. But she radiated a force that made his skin prickle. Power? No. Not yet. But the echo of it. The promise. A seed with teeth.

She was supposed to fear him.

Yet she looked like she wanted to fight him. He almost smiled. He stepped closer, and the forest bent with him—shadows stretching, branches bowing, air thickening with power. The girls whimpered. One sobbed. Another fainted. But she didn’t flinch. Her shoulders squared as though bracing for a blow she refused to run from. Her fire-lit hair whipped around her in the cold wind, thick waves sticking to her damp lashes, and her tall, slender frame stood rigid against the pressure rolling off him. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed, but her chin stayed up, jaw clenched, eyes locked on his like she refused to be the one to break.

A thrill shot through him. He hadn’t felt this alive in centuries. Not when kings had begged at his feet, not when empires had burned in his name. Those memories were embers; this felt like the first breath before a new blaze. He let the silence stretch, savouring the moment. Letting fear soak into the clearing, letting power coil around his form like smoke around embers.

Somewhere behind the girls, a child cried. Someone whispered a prayer. A torch hissed.

He ignored them all. He kept his eyes on her.

And the longer he looked, the more the strange pull inside him sharpened—raw, instinctual, possessive. It crawled up the back of his neck, tightening his muscles with the urge to touch her, to drag a clawed finger down her throat, to press his mouth against the pulse hammering beneath her skin.

The connection thrummed deeper, echoing through his arm, down his spine, into the pit of his stomach. It was like standing in the centre of a circle of sigils and feeling one line suddenly complete, the pattern locking into place with a satisfying, ominous click.

That mark—the one forged in blood and fire when he made the ancient pact—had never reacted to a mortal before. Not in all the long, dull centuries he’d walked between worlds.

But for her, it sparked. It awakened. It pulled.

His fangs ached with the urge to sink into her shoulder. His palms tingled, wanting to feel the shape of her hips, her waist, her throat. Every predatory instinct in him rose to the surface, hot and sharp, demanding claim.

He flexed his hand once, watching the ink ripple faintly across his skin, like something inside it had come alive. The runes shifted again, the edges of one symbol curling toward another, as if reaching. As if recognising.

Why her? Why now? What changed?

He reached the edge of the clearing, boots sinking slightly into the earth. The girls flinched away as he passed them one by one. Their fear washed over him in stuttering waves—too much, too thin, breaking and breaking again before it could ever truly touch him.

All except her.

She didn’t retreat. She didn’t avert her eyes. She didn’t bow her head. She stood like a challenge. And The Devil had never been able to resist a challenge.

And gods—she was beautiful. Harshly so. Wildly so. Her eyes, a deep storm-lit blue, were wide and furious, framed by dark lashes that did nothing to soften the intensity burning in them. He towered over her by nearly two feet, but she stood as though the difference in size meant absolutely nothing.

He stopped directly in front of her.

Close enough that the heat of him warmed her chilled skin. Close enough that she could see the molten gold swirling in his irises. Close enough that he could hear her pulse slam against her throat in a steady, defiant rhythm. It beat out a pattern he’d never heard in a mortal before—fear woven with fury, terror plaited with refusal.

It called to something ancient in him—something that wanted to press her against a tree and bare her throat. Something that wanted to drag her into the shadows and brand her scent into his lungs. Something that whispered mine with every breath she took.

“Little flame,” he murmured, so quietly only he could hear it. “So, you’re the one.”

Her breath caught, eyes wide but not with fear.

Anger. Confusion. Something he couldn’t name. Something that tasted, faintly, like destiny—an old, bitter flavour he had no interest in sampling and yet could not quite spit out.

He had never felt this kind of pull to a mortal. Not once. Usually, their fear was amusing, their awe predictable, their despair flattering. They were entertainment at best. A necessity for the Pact at worst.

But this girl… He didn’t know her name yet. But he felt it in his bones; it would be beautiful, just as she is. Names had weight. Names were binding. He could feel the shape of hers circling him already, like a phantom chain waiting to be clasped. And goddesses help her—he wanted to hear that name fall from her lips while his hand was wrapped in her hair.

She was like nothing he’d ever tasted in the air before.

Fury wrapped in beauty. Defiance wrapped in vulnerability. A spark wrapped inside a mortal shell.

He wanted to touch her just to see if he’d burn. Not from her power—she had none yet worth noting—but from whatever wild, reckless thing inside her had reached across realms and lit up his mark.

He wanted to tilt her chin up with a single finger. He wanted to bite the place where her pulse pounded. He wanted her to fight him—so he could take pleasure in breaking that defiance open, one trembling breath at a time.

He dragged his gaze slowly down her face—the clench of her jaw, the defiance in her stance, the stubborn lift of her chin.

She was not soft. She was not obedient. She was not willing. And for the first time in over a century, a slow, dangerous smile curved his lips.

This hunt would not be boring. For once, the night ahead did not stretch before him like a script he’d already memorised; it unfurled like an unread page, edges glimmering with possibility and blood.

He lifted his hand. The tattoo along his arm glowed faintly as he reached toward her face, not touching—almost touching. Heat bled off his skin in a narrow band, a breath of desert in the winter air, and he watched the goosebumps rise along the side of her throat in answer.

Her breath hitched.

His smile widened.

“Run well, Little Flame,” he whispered. “I’d like a good chase tonight.”

Her eyes flashed with heat—anger, hatred, confusion, something too raw to name—and she spat the words through her teeth: “I will not run for you.”

His pulse kicked hard in his chest. Oh, he liked her. The refusal coiled through him like smoke, turning sweet in his lungs. Mortals made so many promises they couldn’t keep; this one, he would enjoy breaking.

He leaned in just enough that she felt his breath ghost across her neck, sending an involuntary shiver down her spine.

“You will,” he murmured. “Because I want you to run.” He paused.

“And what I want… I take.”

The clearing trembled. The girls whimpered. The villagers gasped. Even the trees seemed to flinch, their branches drawing tighter together overhead, knitting shadows into a thicker canopy.

The Devil stepped back, eyes locked on hers. “Mine!” The guttural sound slipped through before he could stop it. He had chosen. He didn’t need the night to hunt the sixteen, to feel them out; to find the right one, he already knew she was his.

He could feel the hunt stirring inside him, ancient instincts awakening, heat coiling in his blood, power crackling at his fingertips. Old pathways lit up across the forest floor to his senses—routes he had run a hundred times now overlaid by new, sharper lines that all ended in her.

The forest welcomed him. The night bowed. The hunt waited. His smile turned wicked.

“Let the Offering begin.” Above them, the moon slid free of a thin veil of cloud, silvering the edge of his horns and setting the runes on his arm aglow like fresh brand marks—a silent herald to the promise he had just made.