Chapter 161 (Finale)

The man—male—down the alley was Skull .

After ten years, after all the executions and burnings, a Skull male was prowling toward her. Pure, solid Skull . There was no escaping him as he emerged from the shadows yards away. The vagrant in the alcove and the others along the alley fell so quiet Mia could again hear those bells ringing in the distant mountains.

Tall, broad-shouldered, every inch of him seemingly corded with muscle, he was a male blooded with power. He paused in a dusty shaft of sunlight, his silver hair gleaming.

As if his delicately pointed ears and slightly elongated canines weren’t enough to scare the living shit out of everyone in that alley, including the now-whimpering madwoman behind Mia , a wicked-looking tattoo was etched down the left side of his harsh face, the whorls of black ink stark against his sun-kissed skin.

The Morse codes could easily have been decorative, but she still remembered enough of the Skull language to recognize them as words, even in such a