Chapter 35 — POV: Kieller
The warehouse doors burst inward beneath my men's boots, steel shrieking as it gave way. Gunmetal shadows cut through the dark, the stench of rust and damp thick in the air. My pulse was a war drum, every step closer to where she was — where they dared to take her.
I was prepared to tear this place apart piece by piece, to drag her captors by their throats into the light and burn them alive if I had to.
But what I found froze me mid-stride.
Not the rescue I had envisioned.Not Lyra, broken and waiting for me.
No.
She was standing.
Over a corpse.
The leader's mask was cracked open like rotten porcelain, his body sprawled on the ground, neck twisted at an angle that spoke of violence far more intimate than any bullet. His blood still steamed against the cold floor.
And Lyra—
Lyra was breathing like she'd been dredged from the depths of hell itself. Shoulders heaving, wrists raw and bleeding from split zip ties. Her hands were stained crimson, shaking not with weakness but with something darker. Her eyes—when they finally lifted to me—were not the eyes of a victim.
They were the eyes of a predator who had already fed.
"Lyra…" The name scraped from my throat, lower, heavier than I meant. "What did you do?"
Around me, even my men hesitated. The other masked cowards had fled or cowered, leaving the warehouse echoing with nothing but the sound of her ragged breaths.
She swayed slightly, blood dripping from her fingertips onto the concrete. Then, with a voice that trembled only at the edges, she answered:
"He wasn't just anyone."
She looked down at the corpse. For a moment, her face flickered—pain, rage, memory all bleeding into one. And then she looked back at me, and the venom in her tone was pure steel.
"He was mine."
The words lodged in my chest like a blade. Mine. Not in possession, but in history. This wasn't random. This wasn't a stranger. Whoever he was, he was tied to the fractures in her past, the wounds she never let anyone see.
I stepped closer, slow, deliberate, my shoes cutting through the pool of his blood. My hand itched to take her chin, to force her to look at me, to tell me everything.
"What the hell does that mean?" I demanded, my voice slicing the silence. "What did he do to you?"
She flinched—only slightly—before pulling herself upright, every inch of her shaking body arranged into mockery of poise.
"It's a long story," she said flatly, her tone slicing sharper than my own. "I'm fine."
Fine.Bleeding, trembling, standing over a corpse, and she had the audacity to call herself fine.
"Don't you dare—" I began, but she cut me off with a flick of her gaze, arrogant even in ruin.
"I'm flying back tomorrow." Her voice was iron through the cracks. Then, as she turned away, she delivered the final blade without hesitation:
"Thanks for coming late."
The words slammed into me harder than any bullet.
And then she walked.Past me. Past my men. Past the corpse that still bled at her feet.
I let her pass—not out of mercy, but because for the first time, I understood something that unsettled me more than her bruises or her blood:
Lyra didn't need me to save her.She had already saved herself.
But she left me with something else, something I couldn't abide—Questions.
Questions I would drag out of her, no matter how much she fought me.
Because if she thought she could walk away cloaked in blood and secrets—She had no idea just how far I'd burn the world to make her speak.