His mind circled back to Emma. To the argument before the wall. To the way her voice had cracked—the smallest fracture in her composure—when she asked him to stop shutting her out.
He had shut her out. He’d done it on purpose, with full awareness of the damage it would cause, and told himself it was the right call.
Shhhhk.
Marcus had already shown what he did with people around them. Kate. Lena. Peripheral targets at the time, and still he’d found ways to use them.
Emma wasn’t peripheral. He’d let her get too close. Not in one moment, but in many little ones.
Coffee left waiting for him in the morning. Her things in his bathroom. The sound of her moving through his kitchen like she belonged. The way she pushed back. The way she held eye contact. The way she learned.
She’d moved toward him. Like she didn’t know she was supposed to be afraid.
He’d noticed all of it. He should have made corrections sooner.
Shhhhk.
He flipped the blade and started on the other side.
She could shoot. She could problem-solve under pressure. Neither would matter if someone trained got to her first.
Better she hates me.Better that than dead.
He kept the blade moving.
Shhhhk.
He set the whetstone aside. The blade was sharp enough to split a hair, perfect edge gleaming. He sheathed the knife and rose, needing movement.
Maybe meditation would recalibrate him.
The Guardian discipline was muscle memory after two decades. Zach centered his weight. Feet shoulder width apart. Breathing deep.
In for four. Hold for four. Out for six.
His awareness expanded outward. The immediate space first?—
The muted mechanical hum of the air conditioning. Palm fronds scraping the window frame in the offshore wind. The dry, papery cry of a barn owl hunting somewhere in the trees east of the cottage. Surf breaking against the wall two hundred yards south, the rhythm irregular, which meant the tide was shifting. The creaking stress of the cottage itself, the subtle language of a building settling at night.
And closer. Much closer.
Emma’s breathing from the bedroom.
Slow, measured. The deliberate rhythm of someone working to regulate their own nervous system. Someone who was not, in fact, asleep.
He put that silence in her.
He moved through the forms. Slow, controlled sequences designed to keep his reflexes calibrated and his mind clear. Strike. Block. Pivot. Weight shift. But his awareness kept circling back.
The bedroom door. The breathing behind it. The careful, deliberate steadiness of it.
Emma wasn’t sleeping. She waschoosingnot to fall apart. The same way he chose not to, with the same grim, practiced efficiency.
He’d done that to her. Handed her that wound and walked away, leaving her to manage it alone in the dark.
He returned to the window, rubbing his chest as if it might ease the ache there. Picked up the knife. Ran the familiar check—blade presentation, edge alignment, handle integrity.
The blade reflected the moonlight. Perfect edge. Perfect and ready and completely beside the point.
