Alden doesn’t blink.
He turns his face slowly with a vicious glare. It hits like a blow. My limbs seize. My heart stops.
He throws me down—not hard, just enough to leave me gasping. Then he kneels. Calm. Careful. Reaches into his jacket.
A syringe.
“No!” I scramble backward, clawing at the ground, but my leg hurts too much.
“Shhh,” Alden hushes, pressing me down, his grip landing between my shoulder blades. “You’ve had a very big day.”
“Don’t—”
The needle stings. Cold fire.
My vision lurches sideways, swimming, melting. The smoke from the destroyed SUV rises in the distance.
I can’t see the heat signatures. They’re gone.
I’m still screaming in my mind when the black takes me.
When I come to,the memories come flooding back.
I expected the sterile smell of antiseptic.
Instead, it’s smoke from a crackling fire curling in my nose. It’s musk and spice, clove, leather, and something darker. Somethingmale.
Beneath my fingers: soft sheets. Warm. Real. A thick duvet presses down on me.
Am I imagining this? Will I open my eyes, finding this a delusion? I’m not here. I am in a padded room with a straitjacket, facing the grim torture of isolation.
Thock.
The unmistakable knock of firewood. Like bones being stacked in a pyre.
I stir. My fingers twitch. My body is sluggish.
When I blink my lids open, I see him.
Alden. He’s kneeling beside the fireplace, a wrought-iron poker in hand. He’s stabbing at the logs with too much force for a man simply tending flames. The light bathes him in gold, shadows dancing over his sharp cheekbones, the set of his jaw. He hasn’t noticed me yet. Or he has and wants me to think he hasn’t.
His bedroom is exactly what I feared it would be.
Grandiose.
The bed is massive, built for more than two. The kind of thing a man keeps when he’s got multiple wives and no shame. Circles, his symbol, are carved into the wood post with sheer black canopy drapes.
Silken robes hang on the wall like holy garments.
A ram’s horn is mounted on the wall above the dresser. Random other animal skulls decorate the walls. I shiver.
The Bible of the Prophet rests on the end table to my right with a decanter of amber liquid on the corner table.
The Prophet’s throne, disguised as a bed.
His private chapel. His church of psychological breakdowns, psychiatric episodes, and hollow hearts. And now I’m in it.
“You’ve only been out about an hour.” His voice cuts through the fire’s pop, far too casual. “I remember how you used to sleep so lightly.” He turns to face me, the poker still in his hand.
