Buried deeper—where I didn’t want to dig—lurked a question that terrified me more than anything:
If Gabriel truly intended to kill me,why had he gone to so much trouble to keep me alive?
The storm battered the cabin from every direction.The fire crackled.Gabriel stayed motionless, a dark outline against white.
And I sat tied to a chair, fighting pain, fighting panic, trying to understand the monster who saved my life after he destroyed it.
Gabriel moved through the cabin like he followed a routine burned into muscle memory.He checked every window, tested each latch twice, then returned to the hinges on the door as if failure could hide there.He walked the perimeter of the room next, scanning corners and furniture, shadow to shadow, confirming nothing had changed while we stood inside.
I watched because I had nothing else.My wrists were tied to the chair arms, ankles secured to the legs.The fire warmed the air but didn’t soften the ropes.Watching him became the only weapon available to me.If I wanted to survive, I needed to learn him.Every flaw, every hesitation, every flicker of humanity under the ruthless shell.
He opened boxes stacked near the counter and sifted through supplies like an inspector—labels turned upright, contents verified, dates checked.A first-aid kit came out long enough for him to flip it open and assess names on medication packets before everything returned to its exact position.Precision ruled every movement.He treated survival the way other people treated religion—ritual and discipline without compromise.
But he slipped in places that mattered.His jaw clenched when he found a box stored wrong.His reach slowed when he neared my side of the room, his peripheral attention never leaving me.He refused to turn his back fully.Even while pretending to ignore me, he monitored every shift in the chair, every sound from my breathing, every tiny sign of resistance.
He had control, but he didn’t have peace.
The fire spread across the logs he’d arranged earlier, throwing heat into the room that thawed the cold buried in my bones.Pain tingled through my fingers where circulation returned.I hid the reaction, but my jaw tightened anyway.He noticed before I could mask anything.He didn’t look long, but he looked—and the flicker in his expression unsettled me.Not guilt.Not pity.Something sharper.Something he didn’t want to feel.
He added more wood to the fire.I watched his hands while he worked—large, scarred, marked by old breaks or fights he’d survived.Pale lines across knuckles and fingers told the story of violence long before tonight.A tremor slipped through those hands when he reached for another log.Quick, subtle, nearly invisible.Someone still stabilizing from adrenaline.Someone not as empty as he wanted to be.
Our gazes met across the firelight.His didn’t show anything.Mine probably showed too much.I looked away first.I pulled against the ropes again, testing give, hunting for weak points.Pain flared under the bindings.I bit down on the sound rising in my throat.
He saw anyway.
His attention dropped to my wrists, lingered on raw skin, then shifted to the flames.His jaw flexed again, tension visible in the shape of his shoulders.
“You’ll tear your skin,” he said.The warning came low, without heat, without interest—practical, not sympathetic.“Nothing to gain by fighting the rope.”
“Then untie me.”My voice came steadier than I expected.“If you care about my skin.”
He didn’t respond.He stared into the fire until whatever slipped through him earlier disappeared.The tremor in his hands stopped, controlled by force.When he turned away again, he carried a box from the far stack and opened it on the table.
Freeze-dried meals.Camping supplies.Enough food to last weeks.Maybe longer.
My stomach tightened.He hadn’t dragged me here to kill me immediately.He had a plan—one I didn’t understand yet, one that didn’t end quickly.Waiting for orders?Waiting for permission?Waiting for something worse?
I shifted again to ease pressure on my wrists.The movement pulled his attention despite how hard he fought it.His focus moved down my face, over my chest, to my tied hands, then rose back up.
“Cold?”The question sounded like a slip, like he’d spoken without thinking.A flash of annoyance crossed his expression right after, as if he regretted revealing anything.
I wanted to say yes.I wanted blankets, warmth, anything that made me feel less like prey held in stasis.But answering yes meant admitting need, and need meant weakness he could use.
“No.”
We both knew I lied.He didn’t challenge me.His hands tightened around the box before he set it down.A muscle jumped along his jaw again.He turned away.
The storm hammered the cabin from every side, wind slicing across the walls hard enough to rattle fixtures.Snow built against the shutters, burying us deeper by the hour.Rescue existed in theory only.No one knew I’d left the gallery late.No one knew I came home at all.A missing-person report—if someone filed one—would start too late to save me from this room.
The fire popped behind me.Gabriel’s attention snapped toward the sound, then back to me.On some level, he tracked everything I did.On another level, I tracked everything he did.A standoff disguised inside silence.
He returned to the door and checked it again.Bolt set.Hinges secure.The lock would hold against a person, a snowdrift, or both.I cataloged that information with everything else—three windows, boarded from the inside; no phone; no radio; no easy weapon within reach; fire poker too far; kitchen knives further; not enough slack in the rope to even lean forward.
The space became a cage the moment I looked at it through tactical eyes.
He stepped away from the door and scanned the room again.When his gaze landed on me, something in him paused.He looked at me like he hadn’t expected me to still be breathing, like my continued presence complicated a job that shouldn’t have complications.
Then he moved to the window.He stood there, facing the storm, shoulders broad enough to block most of the gray light that seeped through the shutter cracks.I didn’t know whether he watched the snow or watched my reflection in the glass.
