Gabriel didn’t come closer, but his posture sharpened—head up, shoulders tense, every muscle waiting.He didn’t say a word, but his whole body was a warning.
Another wave of dizziness crashed over me.My vision blurred around the edges.My head dropped forward before I caught it.Barely.
Gabriel pushed to his feet instantly.
I forced myself upright again and shook my head—not as refusal, not as communication, just instinct, the way someone shakes water from their ears after a plunge.
“Don’t,” I rasped, though I wasn’t even sure what I was telling him not to do.Help me, touch me, talk to me, pity me—any or all of it.
He stopped halfway across the room, like I’d drawn a line he couldn’t cross.
“You’re hurting yourself,” he said.
“And who caused that?”
His eyes closed once.A flash of pain, too fast for anyone who wasn’t watching him this closely.Then he reopened them, mask restored.
“I’m not letting you die here.”
“You don’t get to make that decision.”It surprised me how steady I sounded.“Not anymore.”
The wind slammed hard against one of the shutters, rattling the entire wall.The sound jolted through both of us.Gabriel turned his head slightly toward the window—always tracking threat first—but his focus snapped back to me almost immediately.
“You think not eating is giving you control,” he said.“But all you’re doing is making yourself weaker.”
“I’d rather be weak than obedient.”
That time he didn’t hide the impact.His breath left him in a slow, controlled exhale, like he needed to force calm into existence.
“You don’t understand what’s waiting if you leave this cabin,” he said quietly.
“I understand exactly what was waiting in my house.”
The words hung between us like a blade.
He didn’t flinch.He froze.
Then—without drama, without anger—he turned and walked away.Not far.Just to the hearth.He picked up the fire poker and pushed the coals with sharp, deliberate movements that sent a spray of sparks up the chimney.It was too forceful to be necessary.Too controlled to be an accident.
He didn’t look at me, but his voice reached me across the room as steady as ever.
“You will eat eventually,” he said.“Because I’m going to keep you alive.”
“I’m not yours to keep alive.”
He didn’t answer.He didn’t react at all.But the air changed—charged, dangerous, unresolved.
The fire snapped loudly, sending sparks skittering across the logs.The storm moaned around the cabin, wind slipping under the eaves in long, miserable notes.
The sandwich still sat untouched in front of me.
And I sat across the table from it—shaking, starving, furious, and more determined than ever not to bend first.
Gabe
She turned her face away from the sandwich and for a second something inside me misfired.Not emotion exactly—something more primitive.A pressure that had been building behind my ribs all morning sharpened into a point.
I’d killed her family.I’d dragged her here.I’d tied her to a chair.And now she was going to starve herself because it was the only form of control she had left.
