“I didn't do anything to you, Sophie,” he says measuredly.
His grip is firm, but not painful, his thumbs pressing lightly into the insides of my wrists as if he’s grounding me, anchoring me to something I don’t want to feel. Heat flares again beneath my skin at the contact, a restless, volatile pulse that makes my breath hitch and my teeth clench. I hate that my body reacts to him like this, hate that it feels familiar, intimate, right in the most dangerous way.
“Let go of me…” I hiss, trying to pull free, but he doesn’t budge. His eyes search my face, scanning me the way I scan patients when something is wrong and they won’t tell me what it is.
“Sophie…” he says quietly, deliberately, like he’s afraid a wrong word might shatter me. “You’re not imagining things.”
That does it.
The last fragile thread holding me together snaps, and I wrench my hands out of his grip, shoving him back a step. My chest heaves as I glare at him, my nails biting into my palms as Ifight the urge to scream, to cry, to demand answers I’m not sure I want anymore.
“D-don’t,” I warn him, my voice shaking. “Don’t say that. Don’t try to convince me I’m not losing my mind.”
“You’re not,” he responds immediately. “And I won’t lie to you anymore.”
I let out a harsh laugh, backing away until my spine hits the wall. “That’s rich, coming from you. What makes you think I’d believe anything you tell me? You kidnapped me, forced me into a marriage I didn’t want, locked me in a room, and now you’re standing here telling me you’re done lying?”
“Yes,” he says, without hesitation, eyes as sincere as I’ve ever seen them.
The certainty in his voice unsettles me more than anger ever could.
“The valley you’re in,” he continues slowly, watching my face like he’s measuring each word’s impact, “is hidden. Protected. It doesn’t appear on maps the way you know them. People don’t just stumble into the Bitterroot Valley. Not where we’re hidden, anyway.”
My heart stutters, but I scoff, folding my arms tighter around myself. “So now you’re telling me secret societies exist? Are you involved in some kind of cult?”
“Werewolves exist,” he says, and the words land wrong—too flat, too calm, too serious.
I stare at him, blinking and waiting for the punchline. When it doesn’t come, when his expression doesn’t crack even a little, something cold slithers down my spine.
“And demons exist,” he adds, again too calm to imagine that he’s being anything but serious. “What you saw inHamilton, the thing that chased us in that alley and into the park…what you burned—”
“I didn’t burn anything,” I snap, my denial sharp enough to cut through glass. But there’s no illusory mirror in front of me, just Damian’s face. Too serious, too certain. “I didn’t do that. I’m a nurse, Damian. I save lives. I don’t—” I gesture around me helplessly, my arms flailing defeatedly, my throat closing around the rest of the sentence.
His gaze softens, but he doesn’t back down. “You heal. You feel deeply. You’ve always felt more than most people do. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.”
I shake my head, my curls slapping my cheeks as panic builds. “You’re trying to manipulate me. You think because I care, because I feel things deeply, you can spin this into some…some destiny story. I don’t want it—whatever this is, I don’t want it. You can’t force it on me. You can’t control me because we’re married on paper.”
“The marriage wasn’t about control, Sophie,” he sighs remorsefully, and for the first time, something like pain flickers across his face. “It was protection. For you. And for my people.”
I laugh again, but it sounds brittle even to my own ears. “That’s what every leader of a cult would say. A tyrant. A narcissist.”
Something flashes behind his eyes then—frustration, restraint, regret—but he doesn’t argue. He just steps aside as I shove past him, my bare feet hitting the cool wooden floor before I storm out of the cabin and into the open air, needing space, needing proof that I’m still me.
The valley greets me with a silence so vast, I’m not sure if my mind is playing tricks on me, or if it’s just usually this quiet. I keep my head up, not giving a single glance to that spot where—
No. I won’t even think about it.
The river murmurs gently nearby, mist curling above its surface like warm breath on cold glass. I stalk toward it, dropping to my knees beside the bank, my hands trembling as I plunge my fingers into the water. It’s warmer than it should be. Not hot, just…alive. Steam curls faintly upward, brushing the skin of my forearms like a whisper.
I yank my hand back, staring at it as if it’s betrayed me.
Around me, the wildflowers closest to my knees wilt suddenly, petals curling inward, their colors draining, only to bloom again a second later, brighter, richer, impossibly vivid, as if fed by something unseen.
“No,” I whisper, scrambling backward as I see this response in real time, witnessing it, but unable to accept what I’m seeing. “No, no, no.”
Footsteps crunch softly behind me, but they don’t belong to Damian.
When I turn, a woman is standing at the edge of the clearing, her face unfamiliar; tall, dark-haired, her presence heavy in a way I can’t explain. Her eyes don’t hold pity, or fear, or judgment.
