Still, I stay quiet. Torn between protecting my cover and screaming at him for not seeing me. For notknowing. For notrecognizing.
Ronan did—from across a room, in the dark, with nothing but instinct and whatever connection we’ve always had between us. Or maybe just a well-timed erection. Either way, he saw me.
Rowen? Emerson?
Nothing.
It shouldn’t sting.
But it does.
Because beneath all the blood, the shadows, and years of loss—I still wanted them to know.
Rowen drags me from the room and down the hall, his grip iron-tight around my arm. He’s so much taller now, broader too—nothing like the boy I remember. He moves with lethal confidence, his strides long and angry, and I’m nothing more than dead weight in his hold. He hauls me like I’m a rag doll, as if I weigh nothing at all. In another life, under different circumstances, I might’ve found that strength intoxicating—might’ve teased him for it, used it against him. But this? This isn’t flirtation. This is fury.
We stop in front of a door I don’t recognize—one that’s never existed in the house I grew up in—and my skin prickles. The hair on my arms stands on end, and a whisper of dread curls around my spine. He opens it without hesitation, revealing a narrow staircase descending into shadow. I dig my heels in for just a second, instinct telling me not to go down there, but he yanks me forward and starts dragging me again.
Down we go.
With every step, the air thickens. It’s colder here, damper, the walls sweating with condensation. I can hear the creak of each stair beneath our weight, can feel the stone closing in. The deeper we go, the less it feels like a basement and more like a tomb. Eventually, we reach the bottom and step onto a stone floor, a rock walkway that stretches ahead, lined on one side with old iron-barred cages.
Cages. Real ones. Like something ripped from a medieval dungeon or a nightmare.
I freeze for a second, stunned. What the hell is this place?
My mind reels. This… this isn’t just some forgotten corner of the house. This was built, planned. A place meant to hold people. A place meant for pain.
And my boys—my sweet, broken boys—have lived above this all along?
Suddenly, everything feels a little heavier.
I shouldn’t be shocked, not really. Not after everything I’ve uncovered about Dean and Bryce and the rot that festers beneath their empire. Still, a part of me hoped the poison hadn’t seeped this far. That it hadn’t infected their sons—my guys—the ones I once loved more than air.
But I see the hardness in Rowen’s eyes. The way he doesn’t even flinch as he pushes me toward a cell. They’ve changed. Hardened. Shaped by this place. And I wonder how deep the damage runs.
And this is exactly why I can’t tell them who I am. Not yet.
Because if they’ve become what I fear… if the love we shared really died the night I disappeared… then telling them the truth might get me killed. In their eyes, I abandoned them. Betrayed them. Vanished without a word, left Reign, left all of them to drown in questions and grief.
They wouldn’t see a friend.
They’d see a traitor.
And traitors don’t get forgiveness. Only judgment.
Chapter Sixteen
Rowen
Adrenaline scorches through my veins, burning away the last fog of liquor clinging to my brain. I was drunk when we got home—sloppy, reckless—but the second I saw Ronan bleeding out on that bed, everything sobered. Now, every sense is razor-sharp, locked in on the girl in front of me. Cupcake. The fighter.
I shove her into the metal chair and secure the restraints with more force than necessary. She barely flinches. That alone pisses me off.
My chest tightens as I step back, heart hammering against my ribs. It should be fear—Ronan’s still not out of the woods—but there’s another current running beneath it. Darker. Hotter. My blood’s pumping for more than survival now.
Up close, she’s not the fearless firebrand I saw in the ring. She’s small. Almosttoosmall, like her tiny figure was never meant to hold that kind of rage. There’s something jarring about it—the way her sweat-slick hair clings to her bloody face, how the bruises darken across her skin—and yet she acts likeI’mthe one at a disadvantage.
It messes with me.
