“You fucked your stepbrother,” he explodes, slamming his fist into the counter so hard the bowl beside us shatters. Ceramic sprays across the floor like bone. “You sick, lying, fucked-up?—”
“I didn’t—” My voice breaks completely now. “It wasn’t like that.”
“Don’t,” he snarls. “Don’t you dare rewrite it.”
Tears spill over. I can’t stop them.
“You don’t love me,” I choke. “If you did, you wouldn’t look at me like this. You wouldn’t?—”
He laughs again, sharp and cruel.
“Love?” he spits. “Love doesn’t hide letters from another man in my bathroom.”
He grips my arms now — hard enough to hurt, not enough to leave marks. Strategic. Controlled.
“You don’t love me,” he says. “You used me. You used my name, my money, my protection to build a wall between you and him.”
“That’s not true,” I sob. “I was trying to survive.”
“By keeping him alive in your head?” he shoots back. “By letting him write to you? By letting him tell you what you are?” He leans in until his mouth is right by my ear. “This ends now.”
The words are ice-cold.
Final.
“You don’t see him again,” he continues. “You don’t read him. You don’t think about him.” He pulls back, forcing me to look at him.“And if I find out you lied to me again—if I find out you ever let him touch you after this moment?—”
He doesn’t finish the sentence.
He doesn’t have to.
My chest feels like it’s collapsing in on itself.
“You don’t get to punish me for your fear,” I whisper.
That does it.
His face hardens completely — all warmth gone, replaced by something sharp and transactional.
“I absolutely fucking do,” he says. “Because you belong to me now.” The words settle into the room like poison gas. “And I’m not losing you to a man who thinks he owns you because he wrote pretty threats on paper.”
He steps back, smoothing his shirt like the explosion never happened.
“We leave for the island early,” he repeats. “No more delays. No more distractions.”
I slide down the cabinet, my legs giving out, my hands shaking.
“This isn’t love,” I whisper.
He looks down at me, expression unreadable.
“No,” he says. “It’s containment.”
And as he turns and walks out of the kitchen, I realise something with terrifying clarity:
Noah isn’t trying to save me from Kai.
He’s trying to lock me away before Kai comes to collect what he never stopped hunting.
