He catches me before I hit the floor, lifting me into his arms with a graceful, effortless strength. He walks to the oversized leather chair in the corner of the room, sittingdown and pulling me into his lap, tucking my head into the hollow of his neck. He rocks me slightly, a slow, hypnotic motion that makes the world outside the room—the war, the fire, the blood—feel like a dream I’m finally waking up from.
“I know, Darling,” he says, his lips brushing my temple. “Sleep. The monsters are all on the outside now. I’ve got the door.”
I sob once more, a final, exhausting release, and close my eyes. I hate that I’m safe here. I hate that the man who stole my life is the only one who knows how to hold the pieces together.
But as the darkness pulls at me, all I can feel is the warmth of his skin and the terrifying, beautiful realisation that I don’t want to be anywhere else.
Wendy
Iwake up to the sound of silence. It’s the heavy, expensive kind of quiet that only exists within the walls of this fortress, where the rest of the world is kept at bay by iron and blood.
The sheets are a cool, charcoal silk against my bare skin. I don’t remember him undressing me. I don’t remember being carried from the strategy room. All I remember is the crushing weight of his kindness—the way it felt more violent than his rage because it left me with nowhere to hide.
I shift, the fabric sliding over my hip, and that’s when I see him.
Peter is sitting in a high-backed velvet chair a few feet from the bed. He hasn’t changed. He’s still wearing the white shirt stained with the ghost of my tears and the dried, copper smear of his own blood where I cut him. A glass of amber liquid sits untouched on the side table, the ice long since melted into nothing.
He’s just… watching me.
His eyes are dark, fixed on my face with a terrifying, steady intensity. He doesn’t look like he’s slept. He looks like a man standing guard over a miracle he’s afraid will vanish if he blinks.
“You’re awake,” he says. His voice is a low, rasp that vibrates through the mattress and into my spine.
“How long?” I ask, my voice sounding small and wrecked in the vastness of the room.
“Six hours. You slept like the dead, Wendy. Not a flinch. Not a sound.” He leans forward, his elbows resting on his knees, his hands loosely clasped. The movement is predatory, yet there’s a strange, aching softness in the set of his shoulders. “I almost called the doctor. But then I realised you were just finally at peace. It’s a rare look on you.”
I sit up, pulling the duvet to my chest, my heart beginning that familiar, traitorous thrum. I want to feel the anger from the hallway. I want to remember the fire and the lie he’s built around us. But looking at him now, in the dim, pre-dawn light, I only feel the hunger.
“Why are you sitting there?” I whisper. “Why aren’t you… why aren’t you doing whatever it is you do?”
“I am doing it,” he murmurs, his gaze dropping to my lips for a fraction of a second before locking back onto my eyes. “I’m realising that Vane was wrong. You aren’t my mirror, Wendy. You’re my penance.”
He stands up, and the air in the room seems to contract, sucked into the vacuum of his presence. He walks to the edge of the bed, his movements slow and deliberate, and sits on the mattress. The weight of him tilts my world.
He reaches out, his hand hovering over myhair before he finally commits to the touch, his fingers tucking a stray lock behind my ear. His skin is hot, a stark contrast to the chill of the room.
“You said it was a lie,” he says, his voice dropping to a whisper. “That I fell in love with a ghost. But I’m looking at you now—broken, furious, and beautiful—and I’ve never seen anything more real. I don’t care about the girl in the fire anymore, Wendy. I care about the woman who almost took my head off in my office.”
I swallow hard, my pulse hammering in my throat, right where I drew his blood. “You’re a psychopath, Peter. You know that, right? Normal people don’t do this. They don’t stalk and kidnap and… and worship like this.”
“Normal people are boring,” he smirks, a flash of the old, Peter Hale flickering in his eyes. He leans in closer, his breath ghosting over my skin. “And you, Darling… you were never meant for a normal life. You were meant to be the queen of a graveyard. My queen.”
He leans down, his lips inches from mine, and the choice is there, hanging in the dark. I could push him away. I could scream. Or I could finally admit that the leash around my heart is the only thing keeping me alive.
I don’t pull away. I don’t flinch.
I look at him, really look at him, through the haze of my own exhaustion and the wreckage of the last twenty-four hours. My hands, still trembling slightly, reach out from beneath the silk duvet. I don’t go for his throat this time. My fingers find the collar of his shirt, the fabric stiff with the dried blood I drew, and I pull him just a fraction closer.
There’s a crack in my armour—a tiny, serrated fissurewhere the hate used to sit. It’s a sweetness I don’t recognise, something soft and terrifying that tastes like the first breath after a near-drowning.
“You’re a monster,” I whisper, my eyes searching his, tracing the jagged, beautiful lines of his face. “But you’re my monster, aren’t you?”
The smirk on his face doesn’t grow; it falters. I see the exact moment the King of Chicago loses his footing. His eyes widen, a dark, liquid heat flooding them as he registers the change in the air. I’m not fighting the cage. I’m pulling the bars closer.
“Always,” he rasps, his hand sliding from my ear to the nape of my neck, his thumb tracing the sensitive line where my skull meets my spine. “Yours to use. Yours to burn.”
He moves with an agonising, glacial slowness, giving me every second to change my mind, to scream, to run. But I stay. I lean into the heat of him, my forehead resting against his. I can feel the vibration of his breathing, the low, steady thrum of a man who has finally found his centre.
