“That’s why they’re escalating now,” she murmurs. “Because you broke pattern. Because you chose me.”
“Yes.”
Her arms tighten again.
Hard.
“You’re not their asset anymore,” she says.
I laugh.
It comes out broken.
“They disagree.”
I turn in her grip.
She doesn’t let go.
We end up chest to chest, her hands fisted in the back of my shirt, my palms hovering uselessly at her waist because I don’t trust myself not to crush her ribs if I hold her too hard.
“They engineered obedience into me,” I say hoarsely. “And I still believed I had a choice.”
“You do,” she says immediately. “Right now. You do.”
“They own the kill switch in my spine.”
“They don’t own you,” she snaps.
My jaw tightens.
“They can shut my nervous system down remotely.”
“They still don’t own you.”
“You don’t understand what they built me to be.”
“I understand exactly what they tried to build you to be,” she fires back. “And I understand that you keep choosing not to be that.”
I stare at her.
Her eyes are bright.
Steady.
Furious.
“They engineered obedience,” I whisper. “I am not safe to love.”
She grabs my face.
Hard.
Forces me to look at her.
“Bullshit,” she says, voice shaking with rage. “You disarmed four men instead of killing them. You let me ground you in a gunfight. You tell me the truth even when it wrecks you. Whatever the Alliance built, you are not finished being written.”
My breath shudders.
