She glances down, then back up at me. Her lips curve softly. “Yes.”
The answer should be enough, but I can’t stop myself. “Why did you agree so easily, Noelle? This isn’t small. This is forever.”
She doesn’t hesitate. “Because I’m beginning to like the idea of belonging to you. To you, and no one else.”
Her words punch straight through me, sharper than any blade, warmer than any fire. For a moment, I can only stare, caught between shock and a savage kind of joy.
And then I can’t hold back anymore. I catch her mouth in mine, kissing her with the kind of possession that burns. Her lips part under mine, and I pour everything into it—the relief that she’s safe, the pride in her surrender, the hunger that’s only grown since the first time I laid eyes on her.
She belongs to me now. And I’ll carve that truth into the world as ruthlessly as I carved it into her skin.
The knock at the door grates, dragging me from the fire of her lips. I growl low in my throat, but Demyan doesn’t wait—he pushes the door open, a box balanced in his hands.
“This was left outside the compound,” he says. His tone is clipped, his eyes flick once toward Noelle before darting back to me.
I sit straighter, still keeping her close. “Did you open it?”
“No. But we scanned it. No explosives, no toxins.” He places it on the table. “Clean. At least on the surface.”
I nod once. “Leave it.”
He doesn’t need to be told twice. Demyan inclines his head and slips back out, shutting the door behind him.
The room is suddenly too quiet. I rise, cross to the table, and flip the lid.
Inside—photographs.
Noelle’s photographs. Her laughter, her smiles, her hand tucked in Anton’s. Every memory of her with him, frozen on glossy paper…and drenched in blood. My jaw tightens until it aches.
Noelle gasps softly behind me.
There’s a note tucked on top, written in bold, angry strokes. I pluck it free, read it once.
You are still mine.
Signed, Anton.
My vision tunnels, red bleeding in at the edges. The box creaks in my hands from the force of my grip.
Behind me, I hear Noelle whisper, shaken, “Niko….”
I turn, the fury in my chest a roaring storm. He thinks he can brand her with blood? With fear?
No. She’s branded already—by me.
Chapter 13 – Noelle
The sight of it is like being struck in the ribs—sharp, breath-stealing.
My own face stares up at me from the glossy paper, lips curved in a smile I don’t remember meaning. Anton’s arm is around me, heavy, possessive. The weight of it comes rushing back—how it always felt like a cage, tightening the longer I stayed.
I remember that touch. The way his hand clamped down on my shoulder, not in affection, but in control. In the picture, it looks like intimacy. I know the truth—it was prison.
My throat burns. I had smiled then because smiling was easier. Smiling kept the questions away, kept the fights away. Most of the time with Anton wasn’t living at all—it was surviving, moment to moment, breath to breath.
I can still feel the flash of the camera, the way I leaned into him automatically, trained like an animal. My chest tightens with the memory. He’s trying to remind me, I realize. Trying to drag me back into the shadow of who I was with him.
But I’m not there anymore.
