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I click the first one.
There we are in frozen pixels—leaving the vet clinic, Charity pale and tear-streaked, my arm around her. Another shot of us at the diner, hands linked over Formica. Someone got close. Closer than they should’ve.
Maybe Charity was right. We should’ve grabbed the food and left.
The article is worse than the headline. They’ve dug into everything: my time at the Second Chance Sanctuary, the other gladiators, Laura. They’ve got “sources close to the family” claiming Charity has been “acting erratic.” Amateur psychologists speculating about trauma bonding. Cultural critics arguing about whether our relationship is exploitation—and they can’t even agree who’s exploiting whom.
Every nightmare I’d imagined, multiplied by a hundred.
My phone rings.
Laura.
“Tell me you’re okay,” she says. No hello, no small talk.
“I don’t know.” I lean against the wall opposite our door, pitching my voice down the hallway. “Have you seen—”
“All of it,” she says. “They’re calling me nonstop. They want statements, interviews, some kind of official confirmation that you’re real and not a stunt.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Don’t apologize.” Her tone softens but stays firm. “Draco, you didn’t ask for any of this. Neither did Charity. This is what happens when money and media and old power feel threatened. They start throwing knives and hope something sticks.”
“Her parents—"
“Are scared and furious and using the tools they have,” Laura says. “Influence. Press. Lawyers. You can’t control that. But youcancontrol what you do next.”
“Do I need to worry about… anything beyond the press?” I ask quietly. “Researchers. Pharma people. Military. Anyone who sees me as something to dissect instead of a person.”
“No one’s contacted me,” she says immediately. “And I need you to tell me if they contact you. Promise me that.”
“They haven’t,” I say.
“Good.” I hear the breath she’s been holding. “Then this is just a public mess, not a private threat. Still brutal,” she adds. “But not the worst-case scenario. At least not yet.”
The hotel room door clicks open softly behind me.
I glance back. Charity’s in the doorway, barefoot, hair mussed, phone in hand, face pale.
“I have to go,” I murmur.
“Call me anytime. Day or night. I mean it.”
“I know. Thank you.”
I hang up and step back into the room.
Charity sinks onto the edge of the bed and stares at her screen like it might bite her.
“My mother called,” she says quietly. “Twice. My father three times. I didn’t answer.”
“Maybe you should—”
“No.” There’s steel under the hoarseness. “Not yet. Not when I’m this… raw. I need to think before I let them in again.”
I sit beside her, close enough to feel her shaking, not touching yet. We both scroll. Articles. Comment sections. Think pieces about money and power. Conspiracy theorists claiming I’m an actor. Others saying Charity’s having a mental breakdown live on the internet.
