What they don’t know is that I never needed permission to strike.
Chapter 3
Rhett
Heat wakes me.
Not the good kind—the suffocating, crawling heat that makes you want to tear off your own skin. I surface from sleep gasping, my t-shirt soaked through with sweat that shouldn't exist. The room is cold. I can see my breath in the air, which means the radiator's busted again.
So why does it feel like I'm burning from the inside out?
I swing my legs over the side of the bed, bare feet hitting the floor. The shock of cold should help, but it doesn't. If anything, the contrast makes the heat worse—like my body's rejecting everything that isn't fire.
The bathroom mirror shows me what I already know. I look like hell. Dark circles, stubble, hair sticking up at angles that defy physics. But it's my eyes that stop me cold. They're bloodshot, sure, but there's something else. A flicker of gold in the hazel that wasn't there yesterday.
I lean closer, squinting. Just a trick of the light. Has to be.
The faucet handle is ice under my palm as I twist it, cold water rushing into the basin. I splash it on my face, gasping at the shock. Steam rises up from my skin where the water hits.
Steam.
I stare down at my hands, water dripping from my fingers. The droplets hiss where they slide off my skin, steam curling as if I’m the hot pan.
"What the hell," I breathe.
My reflection stares back, wide-eyed and spooked. The gold flicker is still there, brighter now. Like embers catching the wind.
This isn't happening. This can't be happening.
I've always run warm—genetics, maybe, or all those years working out, building muscle. But this... this is different. This feels like something living under my skin, clawing its way out.
I press my palms to the mirror. Steam blooms instantly, fogging the glass around my fingers. The heat doesn't hurt exactly, but it's relentless. Insistent. Like it's trying to tell me something I don't want to hear.
You're changing.
The thought slams into me, sudden and unwelcome. I can't change. I won't. I'm the steady one. The reliable one. The one who keeps everyone else safe when the world goes to hell.
I'm not supposed to be the thing they need protecting from.
But I can’t stay in this room, pacing like something's about to explode.
The hallway is quiet when I step out, my bare feet silent on the old hardwood. Bree’s still up in the attic. Still sleeping, hopefully. After what happened last night... she needs it.
I drift toward the kitchen on autopilot, muscle memory guiding me while my thoughts stay stuck upstairs. She looked so small in that bed. Pale. Hollowed out. Like whatever the crown took from her isn’t coming back.
The kitchen feels safer. Familiar. I can make coffee, keep my hands busy, pretend everything’s normal until this—whatever this is—goes away.
I reach for the coffee pot. The metal’s room-temp when my hand hits it, but that doesn’t last. The handle warms beneath my palm, faster than it should. Not scalding. Just wrong.
"Shit." I drop it, more reflex than pain, the pot clanging against the counter.
"Smooth, captain."
I spin around to find Jace leaning against the doorframe, his golden hair sticking up in sleep-mussed spikes. He's wearing yesterday's clothes, which means he probably didn't sleep any better than I did.
"Morning," I mutter, turning back to the coffee maker. Maybe if I ignore the heat issue, it'll go away.
"You okay?" Jace pushes off the wall, moving to lean against the counter beside me. "You look like you got hit by a truck."
