“What the hell were you thinking?”
My voice came out low and controlled, but the edge was unmistakable. I was worried for her and wanted her to be safe, but none of it changed the fact that I was pissed. So, so pissed. She flinched then, not dramatically, but just enough for me to see the aftershock still pulsing beneath her skin.
Good. She needed to understand that fucks ups like these were intolerable.
“You walked into the woods. Alone,” I said, pacing once before stopping in front of her again. “You left the house. Actually, to put it more accurately, you ran away from the house. You walked into a dead zone where no guards could see you or reach you, and no one could hear you. Do you understand how reckless that was?”
Ilana stared at the floor, then at her hands, and then finally at me. Her lashes were damp, her eyes rimmed with the kind of exhaustion that could break a person in half if they weren’t careful.
“I needed to call my brothers,” she whispered. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
“They wouldn’t have reached you in time,” I said. “Even if you had somehow managed to get through.”
“I had to try.”
“Your trying nearly got you dragged away and kidnapped again. Have you stopped to think about what might have happened if I hadn’t come for you in time? What might have happened if those men took you with them again?”
The tremor that ran through her body at my words made all of my anger collapse in on itself so fast it was almost painful. She wrapped her arms around her middle as if trying to hold herself together. “I thought… I thought maybe it was over. I did not know those men would find me. That they would be so close.”
“People like that don’t let go,” I answered, quieter now. “They know you are with me, and they might have come sniffing around a Chernykh property just to find you and get you again. This is what always happens when a girl is auctioned. They won’t stop looking for a while now, especially since I have killed two of their men.”
She let out a shaky breath. “I didn’t think it through. I just wanted… out.”
That hit a place inside me I didn’t want examined.
Her desire to escape wasn’t a surprise. I expected it. But the fear behind her voice did something to me I could not properly name. I could see there was still a piece of her that hadn’t recovered from the hands reaching for her, from the rain-blurred faces that had hunted her down, and that shifted my irritation into something else entirely.
I stepped closer. Slowly. Carefully.
“Ilana.”
Her chin lifted just an inch, hesitant, like she wasn’t sure if I was about to trap her or hold her up.
“You are not safe without me.”
The truth tasted brutal in my mouth. But she needed to hear it.
Her lips parted, but whatever argument she meant to make died before it reached her tongue. She shook her head, not in defiance but in disbelief. “I shouldn’t have to be protected like some… fragile thing.”
“Then stop pretending you aren’t scared,” I said quietly. “And stop trying to run away from me and this house and the safety this place provides you. You need time to heal from what you have already been through without adding onto that wound.”
Her breath caught.
And there it was, the truth in her eyes. Raw, unhidden, trembling.
Not fear of me. But fear of what had happened. Fear of what could happen again.
Her shoulders dropped the smallest degree. “I’m fine.”
“You’re shaking.”
“It’s the rain.”
“You’re lying.”
Her lower lip wobbled just a little, but it was enough for me to see it before she looked away again. Something fierce and protective surged through me. Without thinking, I reached forher hands, which were still ice cold, clenched so tightly together that her knuckles had lost all color. I pried them open slowly, letting my fingers warm hers.
She didn’t pull back.
