Instead, it felt like simple truth.
Like gravity.
Like the pull of the moon on the tide.
He must have seen the acceptance in my eyes, because he smiled—that beautiful, terrible smile that made my heart race and my pussy clench around the ghost of his knot.
"The facility was never the cage, Beloved." He stroked my cheek with bloodstained knuckles, and I leaned into the touch like a flower towards the sun.
The blood was tacky, half-dried, and I didn't care where it came from.
Didn't care whose life had spilled onto his hands.
"It was the staging ground." His voice was smoke and honey. His scent wrapped around me. And I understood, with the clarity that only came at the far edge of sanity, that I would follow this man into hell itself if he asked.
He wouldn't even have to ask.
♠ ♥ ♦ ♣
He pressed a needle to my neck.
Cool metal against fevered skin. The contrast made me shiver—or maybe that was the anticipation, the knowledge that he was about to pull me under again, to steal my consciousness with the same casual ownership he'd claimed my body.
A hiss.
The sedative entered my bloodstream, spreading through my veins, countering the endless heat that had consumed me for so long.
My vision blurred at the edges.
The world grew soft and distant. The sharp lines of the observation theater evaporated into watercolor.
"Sleep now, Beloved." His lips brushed my forehead—warm, soft, impossibly tender. "I'll keep you safe."
I wanted to ask where we were going. Wanted to ask what came next. Wanted to stay conscious long enough to understand the shape of the life I was falling into.
But the sedation was already pulling me down, and some part of me—the part that had surrendered completely, the part that had been waiting for this surrender since before I knew his name—trusted him to handle what I couldn't.
I let it take me.
The last thing I felt was his hand closing around mine.
♠ ♥ ♦ ♣
What followed came in pieces.
Shattered glass.
Fragmented impressions.
The fever dream of an addict too high to distinguish reality from hallucination.
Being lifted.
Rook's arms wrapped around me, cradling me against his chest like I weighed nothing. The steady thrum of his heartbeat pulsed against my ear—strong, calm, unhurried, even as chaos erupted around us.
The scent of him—pine, smoke, musk—flooded my lungs and triggered a fresh pulse of slick between my thighs even in my sedated state.
My body knew its Alpha. Would always know him, even when my mind was drowning.
