There’s the knife again, and I am done with being at the mercy of anything, anyone, because no one is killing me, and my hands are on Gabriel’s throat and I’m squeezing, feeling the life under my fingers and taking it because it is the only control I have left.
No one is coming to save us.
And I plan on leaving this place alive.
TWENTY-THREE
Caleb
I woketo the sound of buzzing cutting through sleep and dragging me up too fast, my head heavy and wrong, my body slow to catch up as awareness came in fractured pieces.
I was draped across Novak, half on top of him, my arm locked around his waist as if I’d been holding onto him in my sleep, and for a second, nothing made sense—why I was here, why he was here, why everything felt too close. I stopped fighting it somewhere along the way.
I don’tremember when.
The alarm kept going, and then Novak moved violently, a full-body reaction as he surged up and twisted, taking me with him, the momentum flipping us so hard the air punched out of my lungs. His hands closed around my throat, tight and crushing, and I didn’t have time to react before his fingers locked in, the pressure immediate and brutal, cutting off air and thought in the same instant as his weight pinned me down, his face above mine but not seeing me, not recognizing anything in front of him. This wasn’t Novak.
“Stop—”
It came out broken, dragged through a throat that was already closing, my hands coming up on instinct to grab at his wrists, but he didn’t respond, or register the resistance as anything other than more threat. He was too big and too strong for me to fight off, my hands slipping on his wrists as I tried to force space between us and failed, strength meaning nothing against the full, unrestrained weight of him.
“Please, stop.” My vision sparked at the edges, body shifting from fight to something more desperate as I tried again, voice rough and raw as I forced it out through the pressure.
“Leon—”
That did it.
Something changed in his expression, a fracture in whatever he was seeing, whatever he thought was happening, and I held onto that, forcing the name out again even as my lungs burned.
“Leon, stop.”
His hands released as if he’d been burned.
Air slammed back into my chest, harsh and painful as I sucked in a breath that didn’t feel like enough, my body curling instinctively as the pressure vanished and left everything raw in its wake.
Novak scrambled off the bed, his breathing uneven in a way I had never heard before, eyes wide and not quite focused as he dragged a hand over his face.
I stayed where I was for a second, hand at my throat, lungs dragging air, heart hammering hard enough to make everything else feel distant.
What the hell?
“Don’t move,” he snapped, holding out a hand to stop me.
I pushed myself up at least, coughing once, hand still at my throat as I dragged in another breath that burned all the way down.
“Yeah, that’s not happening,” I rasped, forcing the words out past the raw scrape of his grip, anger rising fast now that I could breathe again.
He froze for a fraction of a second. “It was a dream response,” he said, voice low. “You were in contact range when I came out of it. My body reacted before I had full awareness.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” I shot back, my throat tightening again, this time from anger instead of lack of air. “Another way would be you nearly killed me.”
“I stopped.”
“Are you okay?” I asked, leaning forward despite the warning in his posture, despite the part of my brain that was very aware of how fast he could move. My heart was still racing, the bruising ache at my throat reminding me how close I’d come to real danger—not from whoever we were hunting, but from the man standing in front of me. For a moment, we stared at each other; the tension was sharp, all the old survival instincts crackling between us. I wanted to reach out, but I hesitated, unsure if comfort would go over as comfort right now or as a threat.
Still, I pressed on, letting my voice soften. “It’s all right. You’re here. I’m here.” My own hands shook a little, so I curled them into fists and dragged in a slow breath. The air between us was thick, uncertain.
After a long, uneven silence, I took a step closer, searching his expression for any sign of guilt or regret. There was only raw honesty. “You didn’t mean to,” I said quietly. “I know that.”
