"Moraine…"
Behind a visibly panicked Veronica stood the man with ice where a heart should have been and death sitting comfortably in his gaze. He drained the room of air simply by existing in it. Jordan's chest tightened. His fingers curled white-knuckled around the wheelchair handles as his eyes flicked to the elevator display beside him.
Still his floor.
"Don't," Moraine said, as if reading the thought straight off Jordan's face.
His voice was low, textured with something rough and unyielding. There was no threat in it. Only certainty.
"Trust me," he added, stepping forward. "It won't end well for you."
Veronica gasped as Moraine nudged her aside, not roughly, but with the kind of casual dismissal that stung worse than violence and caught the gate before it could close. He held it open with one hand. "Get in," he said. "We need to talk."
Moraine hadn't spoken directly to him in three years. The last time he had—Jordan swallowed hard.
Without a word, he wheeled Kael inside.
Moraine didn't follow immediately. He leaned out just long enough to cast a slow, assessing look down the corridor, as if combing for threat or contingencies. Only when he was satisfied did he step in and let the gate slide closed with a soft, final clang.
When the doors closed, Moraine took the wheelchair from Jordan without asking and pushed Kael into the adjoining room with unsettling gentleness. Kael didn't resist. He never did with Moraine. He had loved him —trusted him, even—without understanding the cost of that affection.
The bedroom door shut.
Jordan stood alone in the living room, heart hammering, the seconds stretching unbearably thin. A hundred thoughts crashed inside his skull, trying to figure out his next move. There was no escape when Moraine was already here. The chances were quite that the man who had chased them on the road probably worked for him.
Damn it!
He thought he had lost them. He couldn't believe he had led them straight to Veronica's place - their only haven. Maybe he was losing his edge.
When Moraine emerged again, he stopped just inside the doorway, allowing the light to frame his face. His expression was calm—almost bored. There was no trace of guilt, no flicker of regret for the years of silence or the quiet devastation he had left in his wake.
Jordan felt something inside him tighten painfully.
"This isn't your territory," Jordan said at last, breaking the silence before it could crush him. His voice was steadier than he felt. "They'll smell you out before sunset. You know that."
Moraine smiled faintly. It was the kind of smile that had never meant kindness.
"You never understood how territory actually works," he replied.
He crossed the room slowly, deliberately, each step unhurried—as though time itself bent around his convenience.
"I hear you've been keeping strange company," Moraine continued, his tone conversational. "Dangerous ones."
Jordan let out a quiet laugh, more breath than sound. So Moraine knew about Vance after all.
Of course he did.
Askai and Moraine had never shared the same way of looking at the world, but their hatred for the East had been forged in the same place—alleys of the West and the haunting mansions of the East.
For Moraine, the East was only ever a hunting ground or a chessboard. He tolerated no associations with it unless he was the one pulling the strings, turning men into pieces for his own amusement.
If he knew about Vance, then Diana had been thorough. Meticulous. Watching not just Askai, but Jordan too, tracking their movements with quiet patience. The thought made his spine prickle. How long had it been happening? Weeks? Months? Longer?
His mind dragged up an old memory he rarely allowed himself—the night Askai had nearly bled himself dry in spirit if not in body, bargaining with Uncle Tommie for protection. Sanctuary, they had called it. A thin, fragile thing, bought with humiliation and favors Jordan still couldn't think about without his jaw tightening. All so Moraine would let them be after all they had left him alone in the middle of a nest full of vipers.
Jordan wasn't proud of the choices he had made back then. But he had made them for a reason. There were people he loved—people who would never have survived the kind of war Moraine thrived in.
And now Uncle Tommie was gone.
Which meant the sanctuary was gone too.
The walls felt closer suddenly, the air heavier. Whatever thin line had once kept Moraine at bay no longer existed. And Jordan knew, with a sick certainty settling in his gut, that this encounter wasn't a warning.
It was the end of an exception.
"You didn't come all this way to lecture me," Jordan said, forcing himself to meet Moraine's gaze. Askai was safe. Under Vance's roof, even Moraine wouldn't dare touch him.
"No," Moraine agreed softly, stopping an arm's length away—close enough to crowd, far enough to dominate. "I came to see whether you were still worth correcting."
The words struck harder than a blow.
Jordan's shoulders stiffened. "You don't own me."
Moraine tilted his head, studying him with clinical interest, as if assessing structural damage in a building he once designed.
"No," he said. "But I made you."
"You were nothing when I found you," Moraine continued evenly. "Shy. Undisciplined. I taught you restraint. I taught you when to speak, when to disappear. I taught you how to survive people far worse than me."
"You taught me how to be afraid," Jordan shot back.
For a fraction of a second, something unreadable crossed Moraine's face.
"Yes," he said quietly. "And you're alive because of it."
The words only served to ruffle Jordan's feather.
"Oh, really?" he shot back, the laugh that escaped him, was edged with ridicule. "Funny. I remember surviving just fine without you. In fact—despite you." He swallowed, then pressed on, reckless now. "So roar all you want, Moraine. Askai is safe, tucked away behind gold and guards. You're not demonic enough to threaten Kael. And me? I'm useless to you. There's nothing here to soothe that bruised ego you've been nursing all these years!"
He knew the moment he'd gone too far.
Moraine didn't raise his voice. He didn't even frown.
Three steps—efficient, brutal—and Jordan was slammed back against the door, the impact rattling through his bones. Moraine's forearm pinned him there, not choking, just enough pressure to remind him how easily it could become lethal.
"You are more of a moron than I ever gave you credit for," Moraine said, his tone deadly calm. "Askai is in the den of a lion. Not beside it. Fucking inside it. And you think proximity equals protection?"
His grip tightened slightly, just to make the point land.
"He is prey," Moraine went on, voice low and precise. "And you? You are nothing but leverage. A sitting duck, waiting for Regale to decide whether you're useful enough to control him… or disposable enough to bury."
Jordan's mouth opened, a retort burning on his tongue—but the look in Moraine's eyes stopped it cold. That look had taught him long ago when speaking meant dying.