For a moment, he didn't breathe.
Then, slowly, he stepped back. His hand dropped from my jaw, and the air rushed in where his touch had been. It was colder than the room. Colder than anything I've braced for. And God help me, I almost wished he hadn't moved at all.
His eyes stayed on me. No, through me. Like he was seeing two women layered over each other. One alive, one long buried, and he couldn't decide which one I was.
A haunted expression flickered across his face. A flash of grief so sharp, it didn't look like it belonged to a man like him. But it vanished, before I could breathe it in.
Then he turned. No warning. No threat. Not even more demands for answers. Just a quiet retreat, and the soft final click of the door closing in behind him. The silence he left behind felt louder, harder than any shot I've ever fired.
I leaned back against the headboard, staring up at the ceiling as if the white plaster could make sense of any of this. It didn't. It only blurred, swimming in and out of focus as my chest tightened.
I had failed.
Not even a day had gone by, and I've already blown the mission because I tried to save him. Worse, I didn't even understand why. Why I didn't bother to just let the mysterious shooter end him, just like how I intended to do the same. Why I've risked my cover for him. Why the sight of him standing there, alive, felt like I was being gutted and held together at the same time.
Why I felt...drawn to a man I should've killed without hesitation.
My throat burned. Fuck, I'm so thirsty.
The pressure behind my eyes sharpened until I had to squeeze them shut. What the fuck was happening to me? I've survived ambushes in the past. Raids, torture, hell, I've survived losing a part of my life that I couldn't remember. And I never cracked. Certainly never broke like this.
But now, lying there, my pulse still tangled with the ghost of his touch. The warmth of his fingers on my jaw, the way my body responded like it knew him...something inside me twisted. I hated it. Hated how I still reached for him, even when he manipulated me.
The possibilities clawed their way up my throat.
What if the life I've been living...all of it...was a lie?
My grandfather. The story he fed me in that hospital room. How his men had found me on the side of the road. My car wrecked beyond recognition. I was on the way to the airport after a mission, he had claimed. No explanation after that. No details. Just a promise of revenge once I've remembered everything.
Then Alaric...Alexandre...looking at me like he had seen a ghost wearing his missing wife's skin.
A tremor tore through me. Tears slipped free before I could stop them, hot and humiliating. My hand twitched, desperate to wipe them away, to hide them before he'd come back and see me like this, all cracked open. But the restraints wouldn't let me. I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe.
I need to get out of here.
The questions kept coming in my head. Too fast. Too heavy. An avalanche rolling straight through me with no place to run.
"Let me go!" The words ripped out of me as I yanked the cuffs, metal biting into my wrists. I didn't even care if I bruised, if I bled. "Let me go! Fuck! Let me go!"
The panic snapped something loose inside me.
I thrashed harder, body jerking, metal rattling violently against the frame. My breath sawed in and out. Too fast. Too thin. Like the air itself was being sucked away from me.
A raw, feral scream tore out of my throat. Loud and ugly, desperate enough to scrape the walls.
"LET ME GO! LET ME GO! LET—"
My voice cracked, but I kept fighting, kept pulling until fire licked up my arms. The room blurred at the edges. Those lights streaking like I was underwater. My heartbeat was everywhere. Ears, fingertips, skull. All of them pounding so loud it drowned out everything.
I'm losing it. I'm actually losing it.
Then the door slammed open.
Heavy footsteps. A shadow lunged at me. But before I could twist away, a thick hand clamped down on my arm. I jerked, screaming again, but he was stronger, bracing my shoulder as he raised something glinting.
"What are you doing—"
A sharp sting pierced through my skin. It burned, then everything went cold. Like liquid ice shooting up my veins.
I gasped, as my vision tilted, collapsing inward like a dying star.
Everything slowed.
My lashes fluttered, and the stranger stepped back. His face was already smeared into nothing. The ceiling seemed to drift further away. The world around me, melting into static.
Then I saw him, standing by the door.
He looked wrecked. Dressed in black, his dark hair a mess like he had dragged his hands through it too many times. Those green eyes, clouded with something heavy. A kind of devastation that hit me harder than the restraints biting into my skin.
He didn't move. He just stood there with his hands in his pockets, watching me like he wasn't sure whether he should walk away or come closer. Like he didn't know if I was a threat, a ghost or a mistake he couldn't undo. And for a moment, my chest twisted painfully because I didn't understand why he looked at me like that. And why it hurt.
Alexandre. Alaric. Whatever name belonged to him, he just stared at me like the truth between us was something he couldn't bear to face.
Why are you looking at me like that?
My lips moved, but no sound came out. The darkness was already starting to pull me under. My limbs went heavy. The world tilting, blurring at the edges. The drug dragging me under like a tide I couldn't fight.
I kept my eyes on him, still. Like an anchor in the storm.
Taking the way his jaw tightened. His green eyes hard. Looking straight at me.
Then the world went black.