His eyes snapped back to mine.
“I finally matter, Mackenzie,” he said. “I finally get to do something that counts. You don’t have to understand. You just have to go through it.”
His fingers dug deeper into my arms, almost shaking with conviction now.
He wasn’t just unraveling. He thought this was him coming together, piece by piece, into exactly what they wanted him to be.
And I realized, with a nausea that hollowed me out, that somewhere in his head, this wasn’t cruelty.
It was devotion.
He gripped my throat again, breathing in my scent at the base of my neck.
“God, you always smelled so good,” he whined. He removed his hand from my throat.
I dropped to the ground,wheezing. My hands clawed at the dirt, useless and shaking as I tried to drag air back into my lungs.
“What do you want from me?” I spat, my voice raw.
“What I want doesn’t matter,” Jackson said, almost calmly. “What I’mmeantto do does.”
He stepped closer, boots grinding into the earth inches from my hand. That sick pride twisted his features. He’d finally become the thing he’d been practicing in the mirror.
A monster.
“You’re ‘Legacy Thirteen’,” he went on, voice tightening with a horrible kind of excitement. “The endgame. I’ve got to keep you alive.”
Thirteen. The word landed on my chest like a bomb. Like the prongs on the star. My family crest. A crown and a curse.
He leaned in with a calm, sinister smile.
“But that doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun.”
I shook my head. The words didn’t make sense; he didn’t make sense.
“Legacy what?” My voice barely made it out.
He crouched, close enough that I could see the vein fluttering in his neck.
“You really don’t know, do you?” he whispered, almost tender. “About your dad?” His eyes blazed. “The newspaper calls him ‘The Butcher’. But really, he’s ‘The Alchemist’. TheAllianceworships him. You’re their queen, Mackenzie. The heir. Every legacy has to claim its place.”
My stomach lurched so hard I thought I’d be sick.
“You’re sick,” I hissed. “You’re so fucking sick.”
He tilted his head, considering.
“I used to think I was sick. Until I met you. Then it made sense. I saw it in your eyes. I felt it. You’re sick too. That’s why we’re meant to be together.”
He leaned in and spat on the ground beside me, just close enough that I could feel the fleck of it on my cheek.
“You think this ends with you hiding in a dorm room and playing house with Max?” he grinned, the expression snagging at the edges. “He’s an unmarked—a stray. Not blooded like me.”
What the fuck was he talking about? He was talking in riddles.
“What? This is fucking insane, Jackson,” I whispered.
His hands twitched at his sides, a constant, restless flex when he needed to feel steady. I could see the war in his eyes, a mix of devotion and rage. He wanted to worship me and destroy me in the same breath.
