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“They didn’t start circling you because I wanted you,” he says. “They circled you because you survived me.”

The rain thickens until it feels personal, needling my skin, driving cold through every place his grip holds me still. There’s something worse than pain clawing its way up my chest.

“Survived you?” I repeat, and the words don’t come out loud so much as dragged free, raw and ugly, like I’ve reached inside myself and torn something loose. “That’s what you think this is?”

My breath keeps catching wrong—too shallow, too fast—like my lungs don’t trust the air anymore. Rain mats my hair to my face, cold fingers sliding down my spine, soaking me through until it feels like my skin never existed in the first place. Just nerve. Just exposure.

“They don’t know me,” I say again, louder now, because the woods are listening and I want them to hear this too. “They don’t know what it cost to keep breathing when everything else fell apart. They don’t know the nights I couldn’t scream because screaming meant dying.”

My laugh tears out of me—short, cracked, feral. “They know you.”

His jaw tightens, muscles locking hard enough that I feel it through his grip.

“You think I don’t know that?” he snaps, rain streaking down his face, collecting in the grooves of scars that survived things my sister didn’t get to outrun. His voice cuts through the storm like steel dragged slow across stone. “You think I didn’t feel it the second you stopped breaking the way they needed you to?”

“That doesn’t make it yours.” My throat burns around the words, around Cass, around every choice everyone keeps making in my name. “That doesn’t make it right.”

Something in him shifts—dangerous, restrained. His hands tighten just enough to hurt, heat and iron anchoring me in place.

“I would sacrifice anyone to keep you alive,” he says. No pause. No regret. “Anyone.”

The words slam into my chest like a physical blow. Knock-the-breath-out-of-me hard.

I make a sound I don’t recognize—half inhale, half sob—and suddenly I’m not here anymore.

I’m there.

Scarlett tied to a chair, wrists raw and purple, rope biting deep enough to draw blood. Her head hanging forward at a wrong angle, dark hair plastered to her face with sweat and gore. Her shirt soaked red at the shoulder where someone got impatient. Where someone enjoyed it.

The smell hits first—iron and rot and something sweet underneath that makes my stomach heave. The sound next. Her breathing. Shallow. Rattling. Still alive, which somehow made it worse.

Her eyes lift when she sees me.

Not fear.

Anger.

That same stubborn, furious spark she always carried like a weapon.

Don’t, her eyes said.

My knees nearly give out in the present. The rain blurs everything, but the memory stays sharp enough to cut skin.

“You don’t get to do that,” I choke, my voice fracturing open. “You don’t get to decide who dies for me.”

His eyes burn. Dark. Unforgiving.

“She already did.”

The world caves inward.

Scarlett’s name detonates behind my ribs, a second heartbeat I can’t outrun. I smell blood again. Hear rope creak. Feel the weight of her choice settling into my bones like something permanent.

“They don’t get to break her and you don’t get to benefit from it,” I snap. “That sin belongs to them—and I’ll make sure they choke on it.”

“And you don’t get to pretend she wouldn’t have made any other choice,” he fires back. “She knew the cost. Just like Cass did.”

That one tears something loose.