Not broken.
Not helpless.
Not the little girl who learned how to go still and wait for rooms like this to end.
I am the thing love turned feral...and I can feel my teeth.
He shifts above me, beginning to roll my body toward him with the careless confidence of a man who believes the room has already finished choosing his side.
That is the opening.
Not large. Not generous. Barely more than a breath in time... it's enough.
Snapping back my head hard, I drive forward with every last living thing in me. My teeth sink into the side of his neck so deep the world disappears into flesh. There is nothing hesitant about it. Nothing human enough to call a bite. It is an attack in the oldest language my body knows. Jaw locking down. Teeth punching through skin, through the corded line of muscle beneath it, through the arrogant pulse that had been beating there untouched because he never imagined I could become this.
He screams.
The sound rips through the motel room raw and animal, nothing composed left in it. His whole body convulses above me, one hand slamming into the side of my face, another clawing at my shoulder, but I hold on. I hold on with everything I have, grinding my teeth deeper, shaking my head once in a savage little wrench that tears the wound wider. Blood bursts hot into my mouth, hot and metallic, flooding over my tongue in a rush so immediate it almost feels electric. Salt. Iron. Living heat. The definite proof of him being breakable.
He howls again.
Then the word tears out of him, sprayed wetly over my hair through pain and shock.
“B-Bitch!”
Tangling his hand in my hair, he rips me backward, his flesh giving way under my teeth before I lose him. Something tears free. The taste of it is hideous.Triumph floods me so hard it nearly blacks out everything else.
Staggering away, one hand clamped over the side of his neck, blood pumps through his fingers in dark frantic bursts, too much to hide, too fast to control. For one blinding second the room changes shape around that sight.
He is not inevitable.
He is not untouchable.
He is not a god in this room.
He bleeds.
The knife flashes almost immediately, fury outrunning whatever precision he had left. The strike is wild compared to everything before it, driven by pain instead of calculation.
It finds my side anyway.
A white-hot detonation blooms low beneath my ribs, deep enough to steal sound before it gives it back. The exact place he cut Silas. For one stunned heartbeat it feels unreal, a hard bright pressure without pain. Then warmth spills, the wet, sick understanding of my body opening. A wrecked sound breaks out of me, my knees hitting the carpet, the room shuddering sideways.
Still, he is the one coming apart.
One hand stays crushed to his ruined throat, trying to hold himself closed. The other grips the knife, badly now, strength gone uneven in it. Blood keeps spilling between his fingers no matter how hard he presses. His face has gone gray under the rage, mouth opening as though he means to curse me, threaten me, finish what he started.
What comes out is a thick, bubbling choke.
Good.
A kick comes at me next, but there is nothing in it worth fearing. No balance. No control. Too much of him is occupied with not drowning in his own blood. Too much of him is leaking out.
That is enough.
Slamming my palms into the carpet, I lurch sideways, vision swimming red around the edges, pain breaking in jagged waves through my side. No time to measure it. No time to understand how bad it is. Silas is on the floor. Silas is fading. Silas does not have enough air in him to survive the luxury of panic.
My purse.
