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Close enough that her breath ghosts against my collarbone. Close enough that I feel heat rolling off her skin like a strike waiting for a spark.

I should pull her back before she becomes like me.

Before she learns the comfort of violence.

Before she realizes how easy it is to kill what wants to kill you.

But all I can think is—fuck that.

This world forced her hand, and she didn’t choose weakness. She chose teeth.

Something dark uncoils in my chest—something life started carving into me at birth, something the Gospel drove deeper until embodying it was all I had left.

She made a monster’s choice.

And I’m not going to save her from it.

XXII

You reacted. That’s different

My boots crunch over frost-bitten grass. The sound feels too loud in the cold, sharp enough to scrape the inside of my skull. The air tastes like metal and old breath. My leg aches from yesterday’s fight—not sharp pain, just a dragging, insistent throb that reminds me exactly where teeth tore through flesh.

I try to walk it off.

The limp slips through anyway.

Malek sees it. Of course he does. His eyes dip—quick, precise—then lift again like nothing happened. Not soft. Not concerned.

Calculating.

He hasn’t slept. I can see it in the shadows under his eyes, in the way his body holds itself too still, like movement might let something catch up to him.

He shoves the barn door open.

The wood groans long and low, vibrating through the air like it remembers how I sounded the night he dragged me inside. Dust rises slow, catching in pale beams of light slicing through the boards. The smell hits a breath later—stale hay, cold metal, dried blood baked into the floor.

The chains sway.

Just a little.

Metal clicks.

My stomach drops so hard it feels hollow.

“No.” The word slips out before I can stop it. Rough. Exposed. “No, Malek.”

He doesn’t turn.

“Inside.”

Not a suggestion. Not a threat. A fact.

I don’t move. My breath fogs. My chest feels tight, like something’s pressing from the inside. “I nearly died in here.”

The words scrape going up. Like they don’t want to leave.

He turns and the look on his face makes my skin tighten. Not pity. Not softness. Fury—tight, coiled, pointed outward. Not at me. At anything that might try to touch me again.