His gaze drops briefly to where his hand still holds my wrist before lifting back to mine. “Maybe not, but you needed out. Don’t throw the chance away while you have it just because obedience feels familiar.”
As I stare up at him, I realize something I don’t like.
He believes that with absolute certainty, and I don’t know what to do with that.
Because a small, buried part of me can’t help but wonder if he’s right.
The rest of me, however—that’s been shaped and hardened by years of loyalty, duty, and expectation—that part refuses to accept it. After everything, I can’t let it.
“I’m still leaving,” I say, even if the words don’t feel as solid as they did before. “One way or another.”
His expression doesn’t change, like he’s unbothered despite the fight he just put up. “Not tonight.”
The finality in his voice sends a fresh wave of anger through me, but beneath it, something in me fractures a bit more, and I don’t know whether to fight it or run from it.
Chapter 5 - Zane
I don’t normally lose control like this, not over a person.
I’ve spent years training that instinct out of myself, burying it under discipline and routine. You don’t survive the special ops by reacting to every little thing. You survive by staying cold and as untouchable as possible.
So why the hell is she getting under my skin like this? And why am I allowing it to happen?
Standing in the kitchen, hands braced against the counter, I stare at nothing while the sound of Naia’s pacing cuts through the apartment, as it seems to frequently. Even after several days, she hasn’t given it up yet.
She has been relentless. I have listened to hours of it by now, and of her pushing. Of circling back to the same argument again and again, like it’s the one hill we’d both willingly die on. It’s driving me insane.
“You know this doesn’t change anything,” Naia says, voice slicing through the space.
I close my eyes briefly and brace myself for…what is this, round…Ten? Twenty? I’ve already lost count, yet she still isn’t done.
Straightening slowly, I roll my shoulders before turning to face her. I watch as she enters the room, standing with her arms crossed and chin lifted like she’s prepared to willfully ignore my input.
“Funny,” I mutter. “Was about to say the same thing.”
Her eyes narrow, but she presses on. “Keeping me here won’t solve any of your problems.”
“It’s not about solving my problems.”
“You really should get on that. They’re stacking up,” she snaps. “But no…nothing touches you, just me. You made all of this your problem the second you decided to buy me. You could’ve just left it alone, and now I have to face the consequences for your actions.”
There’s that word again—Buy.
It still sits wrong in my chest.
“I got you out,” I say, my patience already thinning, as it does easily now. “If I hadn’t, who knows what disgusting people you could’ve been sent home with.”
“Don’t act as if you saved me out of the goodness of your heart. You jeopardized whatever plan you had and dragged me into something worse.”
I let out a sharp breath, stepping away from the counter as I try to keep my cool, but she’s making it nearly impossible. She really only sees me as a monster, not as someone capable of genuine care.
“Worse? Last I checked, you’re not restrained and paraded around a stage anymore,” I return, feeling another familiar wave of adrenaline move through me. “Yet you’re complaining because I haven’t let you loose like a rabid animal.”
Naia clenched her jaw tightly. “At least in there, I knew what I was dealing with.”
I stop in front of her, incredulous as I blink back at her. “You have to be kidding me.”
“I’m not,” she utters, unfazed. “We both had the opportunity to do something about those bastards back there, and you wasted it.”
