Soft For The Predators

The Claim

Chapter Three: The Claim

The car shot forward so fast I was pressed back into the seat.

Streetlights blurred into long yellow lines.

Jayden’s hand stayed near my knee, not quite touching, but close enough that I could feel the heat from his skin.

“Who’s following us?” I asked. My voice sounded small.

“People who think they already own you,” he said. His eyes stayed on the road ahead, then flicked to the side mirror.

“They were watching the restaurant. The moment you walked out with me, they moved.”

My stomach twisted. “Because of my father’s debt.”

“Yes.”

I turned toward the front. The driver kept his eyes on the road, but I could not forget the flash of gold I had seen in the mirror.

Whatever he was, he was not only human.

Jayden’s phone buzzed again.

He answered without greeting. “How many?” A pause. His jaw tightened.

“Keep them busy. We’re going dark.” He hung up and looked at me. “Give me your phone.”

I hesitated, then handed it over. He powered it off and slipped it into his coat pocket.

“I need that,” I said. “My mother—”

“They can track it. You’ll call her from a clean line later. Right now every signal you send is a trail.”

The car took a hard right into an underground garage. Concrete pillars flashed past. We stopped in front of a private elevator.

The driver got out first, scanned the area, then opened Jayden’s door. Jayden stepped out and held out his hand to me.

I stared at it.

Last night Kingsley had looked at my body like it was something to throw away. Now this stranger was offering his hand like I already belonged to him. My heart still felt raw.

My pride felt worse. But the fear in my chest was louder than both.

I took his hand.

It was warm and much larger than mine.

The second our skin touched, that strange pull inside me surged again—stronger this time, like a rope yanking tight around my ribs.

I sucked in a breath. Jayden’s eyes flashed, dark and intense, as if he felt it too.

We stepped into the elevator. The driver did not follow. The doors closed. Jayden pressed a code into the panel. The elevator rose fast.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“My penthouse. It’s the safest place in the city tonight.”

“And after that?”

“We get married.”

The words still did not feel real. “You can’t just decide that.”

Jayden turned his head and looked at me

fully. Up close, his eyes were not just gray.

There were flecks of silver in them, like light on steel.

“Your father signed your life away to men who sell women. Those men do not care about your feelings. They care about ownership. The only language they respect is a stronger claim. Marriage to me is that claim. Public, legal, binding.

Once the paranormal courts register it, touching you becomes an act of war against Vale Industries. Most of them are not ready for that war.”

“And if I say no?”

His voice stayed calm, but something dangerous moved under it.

“Then I still take you somewhere safe, and we find another way. But the other ways are bloodier. And slower. Your brother is fifteen. Your mother is already breaking. How much time do you think they have once your father dies?”

The elevator doors opened directly into a wide living room. Floor-to-ceiling windows showed the city spread out like a field of lights.

The furniture was dark and expensive. The air smelled clean, like rain and something woodsy.

Jayden let go of my hand and walked ahead.

“You can stay in the guest suite tonight. Tomorrow we deal with the paperwork and the announcement.”

I stayed near the elevator, arms wrapped around myself.

“Why me? You don’t know me. You saw me for five minutes in a restaurant and decided I was worth all this trouble.”

He stopped and turned. For a long moment he just looked at me. The silence stretched.

“I know enough,” he said finally. “I know the second I saw you, every instinct I have locked onto one word. Mate. I don’t get to choose when that happens. Neither do you. It just is.”

Mate.

The word settled over me like a heavy coat.

I did not understand it, but my body reacted anyway—heat under my skin, a restless feeling low in my stomach, the same pull that had nearly dropped me in the restaurant.

“I’m not… I’m not the kind of woman men like you look at,” I said quietly. The words tasted like Kingsley’s voice. Oversized. Too much. Leftover.

Jayden’s expression changed. He crossed the room slowly, stopping only when he was close enough that I had to tilt my head back. His gaze moved over my face, then lower, not with disgust, but with open, focused hunger.

“Whoever put that idea in your head,” he said, voice rough, “was either blind or a liar. You’re soft in all the places I want to put my hands. That is not a flaw. That is the point.”

My cheeks burned. I looked away.

He did not touch me.

He only stood there, letting the weight of his words sink in.

Then his phone buzzed again. He glanced at the screen and swore under his breath.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Kingsley.” Jayden’s eyes lifted to mine.

“He’s downstairs. He wants to see you.”

My heart slammed once, hard.

Jayden watched my reaction carefully.

“You don’t have to talk to him. I can send him away.”

Part of me wanted exactly that. The other part—the part that still remembered six months of secret nights and the way Kingsley used to look at me like I was something precious—needed to know why.

Even if the answer destroyed me all over again.

“I’ll see him,” I whispered.

Jayden studied me for another second, then nodded. He walked to the elevator and pressed a button. A moment later the doors opened.

Kingsley stepped out.

He looked wrecked. His shirt was wrinkled.

His usual calm control was gone. His eyes went straight to me, then to Jayden, then back to me. Something raw and desperate burned in them.

“Amanda,” he said. My name sounded broken in his mouth. “Please. Five minutes. That’s all I’m asking.”

Jayden stayed silent, but I could feel the tension rolling off him like heat.

I swallowed.

“Why? So you can tell me again how I’m too much? How I’m leftover?”

Kingsley flinched like I had slapped him. Maybe he thought I will never find out.

“How did you—” He stopped.

“I need you to hear the truth. I didn't mean any of that. The reason behind them.”

Jayden’s voice cut in, cold and flat. “You have five minutes. Then you leave.”

Kingsley nodded once. He took a step toward me.

Before he could speak, the windows to our left exploded inward in a spray of glass.

Alarms screamed.

Jayden moved faster than any human should have been able to move.

One second he was beside me, the next he had shoved me behind him, body big enough to block most of my view.

Kingsley spun toward the shattered windows, a low, animal sound rising from his throat that did not belong in a human chest.

Three dark shapes swung in through the broken glass on black ropes.

Men in masks. Guns already raised.

And the one in front locked eyes with me through the holes in his mask and said, calm as if he were ordering coffee,

“Amanda. Your new owners sent us. Time to go.”