The word scrapes something raw in my chest.
I don’t sit. I stay standing in front of her, close enough to feel the faint warmth radiating from her skin, close enough that I’d only need to reach out to steady myself if I wanted to. I don’t.
“The tracker,” I say. Flat. Unsoftened. “I wasn’t discussing that in front of the others.”
Her gaze doesn’t flicker. “Fine. We’re alone now. Talk.”
“You weren’t supposed to find out like that,” I say. I hear the edge in my voice and don’t bother sanding it down.
She tilts her head slightly, studying me. “Was I supposed to find out at all?”
The question is clean and precise, no heat behind it, no accusation to push against. It slips straight under my ribs and stays there.
“It was protection,” I say. “At first. A contingency.”
“Explain.” Her jaw is tight. Her tone is terse.
“You were an unknown. A potential threat. They’d never brought a woman in before and I didn’t like it. So I decided it would be safer for all of us if someone kept tabs on you.”
“You said ‘at first’. Meaning?”
“Then I fell in…to obsession. I made you mine. And so it didn’t matter that you had a tracker. Then you were missing. We didn’t know where you were, what they’d done to you, whether you’d come back. But I knew if I could just get off the island and contact someone, we would be able to track and find?—”
“You decided,” she says quietly.
The word stops me mid-breath.
She doesn’t raise her voice. Doesn’t move. But something in her posture locks into place – not defensive, not angry, just…unyielding.
“You decided I didn’t get a choice.”
“That’s not?—”
“It is,” she says, firmer now. “You didn’t ask. You didn’t tell me. You didn’t leave room for consent later. You made a decision about my body because it madeyoufeel safer.”
The truth of it hits harder than any accusation could.
What flares in my chest isn’t anger.
It’s fear.
Hot and immediate and coiling low, the kind that doesn’t shout but cuts oxygen off at the source. The kind that makes your hands itch to grab, to anchor, to make sure the thing you’re afraid of losing stays exactly where you can see it.
“I would do it again,” I say, refusing to give an inch or let her see how shaken I am. How scared of losing her.
The words come out before I can temper them. Honest. Unapologetic.
I expect her to recoil.
She doesn’t.
She nods slowly instead, as if she’s ticking off a final item on a list. “I know. And that,” she continues, voice steady, “is why we can’t stay here.”
Cold spreads through me, fast and absolute. “No.”
One word. Final. Instinctive.
She doesn’t react. Doesn’t flinch. Just breathes. “You didn’t let me finish.”
