The warehouse still smoldered with the echoes of chaos.
Blood pooled in cracked concrete. Spent shells glittered like teeth in the flickering light. Somewhere in the distance, Aiden's shadow moved—unseen but felt, a haunting pulse through the rubble.
Bathed in red glow from a burning fuse box, black leather scuffed, green eyes gleaming like a cat's. Blood splattered across her collarbone. A curved knife hung loose in her hand.
Neither moved.
"Where is he?" Rosalie's voice was low but tense, a coiled wire.
Connie gave a half-smile. "Still breathing. I'd know if he wasn't."
Their stares locked.
Then the fight began.
It wasn't graceful.
It was vicious.
Fingernails, fists, metal scraping metal. Rosalie slammed
Connie into the wall. Connie headbutted her in return.
Rosalie grabbed her arm, twisted—only for Connie to slam the heel of her hand into Rosalie's throat and shove her back.
"You don't even know him," Connie spat, panting. "You love the version he wants to be. The good boy. The safe choice. That's not real."
Rosalie said nothing. "And you're stuck in the past. You want the monster. The broken piece of glass that cuts everyone he touches."
"He was mine." Connie hissed. "Before you. Before Forks. I was there when he carved himself out of the dirt."
Rosalie tackled her to the floor, landing hard on top, her knees pinning Connie's arms.
"You think that matters now?" she snapped. "He's changing. He wants to be more than that."
The silence after the firestorm was suffocating.
Smoke still curled in lazy ribbons through the rafters.
Somewhere, metal groaned as the warehouse settled—exhaling the last breath of the night's carnage. Aiden was gone now, slipped like a shadow back into the night.
Rosalie didn't know where.
But her golden eyes never left Connie.
The other girl was crouched by a blood-smeared crate, clutching her side, breathing shallow but steady. Alive.
Unfortunately.
Rosalie stood over her, arms crossed tight, face unreadable—but beneath the surface, her mind roared.
This is your fault.
All of it. The chains. The bruises. The psychotic warehouse circus of blood and steel. It all traced back to the broken girl crouched in front of her like a wounded dog.
Rosalie didn't move. She just stared. Watching.
Calculating.
"You don't have to keep looking at me like that," Connie rasped without turning.
Rosalie's jaw clenched. "You think I'm impressed that you helped save him?"
Connie didn't answer.
Rosalie stepped closer, boots scraping concrete. "You're the reason he needed saving in the first place."
Connie looked up slowly. "You don't know what we've been through."
"I know what you did," Rosalie snapped. "Drugged him.
Chained him. Let them beat him bloody. And you stood there—what? Thinking it was love?"
Connie didn't flinch. "I didn't want them to hurt him. Dee went too far. It wasn't supposed to—"
"It was exactly supposed to," Rosalie interrupted, voice like ice. "Because you don't see him as a person. You see him as a memory. A possession. Something to cling to while the world burns."
That cut deep. Rosalie could see it. Connie blinked hard, her face crumpling for a heartbeat—before it hardened again.
"He was broken before I found him," Connie said bitterly. "And he'll be broken long after you leave."
"I'm not leaving."
The words surprised even Rosalie. But she didn't take them back.
"I didn't come all this way to lose him to you," she said.
"Or to this madness. You tried to trap him in the past. I want to see if he still has a future."
Connie stood slowly, eyes dark, lip trembling. "If you think he's going to run into your arms, you don't know him at all."
"Maybe not," Rosalie said quietly. "But I'm not the one who tried to kill him to prove I cared."
The silence returned—sharp, suffocating.
Rosalie turned toward the smoke-blackened exit, her voice soft but dangerous.
"You should hope I find him first, Connie. Because if you do, and you hurt him again... I won't be as gentle."
And then she was gone—leaving Connie standing there, surrounded by blood and ash and memories that no longer held their weight.