Page 130 of Forsaking All Others

“That’s why I had to win this challenge,” Claire goes on. “Get this time with you. I want you to know how excited I am at the prospect of being in the final three and meeting your family, becoming your wife. I know you’ve spent a lot of time with Thorun, but I also know that all along, you had your eye fixed on the prize. I never lost faith in you, not for one minute. I knew you’d be standing with me at the end. Nae fleeing frae fate.”

‘No fleeing from fate. I wonder what Cat would think of that. A girl trying to change her fate harder than anyone I’ve ever known, except for maybe one other. A girl I knew a very, very long time ago.’

“This date is important,” I nod, trying to think of something, anything, to say. “But it may not be the last I go on before the final trial.”

‘I need to see Cat. No, I don’t. I’ve done all I can, I have to trust her now, and she needs to trust me.’

“Of course,” she simpers, misunderstanding me. “Of course I’ll see you again before then, Viscount. When we’re apart I know it must hurt you like it hurts me. You can’t say anything,” she scoots closer and places a finger to my lips, “because that’s the Game. But I can say it. I can say it for both of us, my heart — in a poem.”

I have a strong urge to sob out loud as she brings out another piece of paper from a hitherto unseen pocket and begins to read her poem to me.

99

“I’m going to be completely guided on this by you, Thorun, so don’t fuck up.”

“Camping is my jam,” she says quietly, “you don’t need to worry.”

We’re sitting in the ‘great room,’ a jaw-dropping space in what can only be described as an Alaskan ultra-luxury mega-chalet. It’s the fanciest place we’ve stayed in yet, and it’s hard to pull my eyes away from the towering triple-glazed windows overlooking the mountains, and beyond.

Mountains we’ll soon be trying to survive in.

I turn my attention from the windows and the heated wrap-around observation deck, where several contestants sit, and focus on reading back over the challenge description. Obviously I’d only seen final challenges on television, but ours seems unusual in that for the first time in Bachelor history we’re not allowed weapons. It’s as though they want us to kill our food, and one another, with our bare hands.

‘Surely that can’t be right. Maybe they have a selection of weapons when we get there?’

I overhear Claire and Miranda discussing the same thing, Claire telling the Australian that a ‘wight man never wanted a weapon’ and then explaining she meant, ‘where there’s a will there’s a way.’

“Why not just fucking say that then?” Miranda snaps.

“Because we’re not all the uneducated spawn of convicts,” Claire retorts, “some of us have true culture and vocabularies.”

I focus once more on the task at hand and try to zone out the low bickering in the background. One thing is for sure, Jag wasn’t wrong when he said we’d be competing in a cold climate.

“So,” Thorun says quietly as she watches me read, her voice low enough that no one around us can hear our discussion, “you know the bachelor and I watched the Northern Lights the night before last.”

I try not to let my emotions show on my face as I answer.

I’d been eaten up with rage when I first learned about her secret date, rage I’d soon identified as jealousy and quickly realised was just stupidity. But once I’d settled down and considered their date from all angles I’d had an unwelcome epiphany — one I’m still grappling with.

At the last ceremony, when only two remain, I’ll bet anything Jaguar’s been told he has to bite the one he doesn’t choose. That ceremony can’t be fudged. Starlen can’t suck the loser. The bachelor must bite to the death the one he doesn’t want to marry. And who, of all the contestants, has he bitten twice because he loves the taste of her blood?

Me.

I’ve come to the realisation that he wants both Thorun and I at the final ceremony because he’s going to kill me.

The problem is, I don’t think it really matters if it is Thorun in the final two. No matter what contestant is standing beside me, I think he’s going to only want to drink from me. I’ve struggled to find any other scenario, any other strategy that might fit with him keeping his honour, keeping his vow not to bite women, and I can’t. He’d told me that sometimes he has to kill women, not for food, but for other reasons. And he’d said that not every woman was good. I’m not good, I know that. And then there’s the fact he’d already bitten me and liked it so much that both times he struggled to stop. The third time is the charm.

‘There’s no doubt about it. He’s going to kill me.’

I focus back on Thorun now as she calls my name.

“Cat.”

“Yes?”

“I wanted you to know that he asked me something, to do something, when we were together.”

“Thorun,” I growl and hold my hand up, “I’m not Sona. I don’t want to know.”