LOGINKian's POV"I have nothing to say to you."Margaret sat at the kitchen table with her arms folded and her eyes fixed on a point somewhere above my left shoulder. Her coat was still on. Her bag was on the floor beside her chair. She looked like a woman who had been moving fast and had stopped mid-motion and was now sitting very still in the way of someone who had not yet decided whether to keep pretending.I pulled out the chair opposite her and sat down.I didn't say anything. I just looked at her.Margaret had been in our home. She had sat at our kitchen island and drunk tea and watched Ezra investigate the sleeve of Eliora's shirt and smiled the smile of a woman who had nothing to hide. She had squeezed Eliora's hand in the kitchen when Eliora asked if Ezra was okay. She had pressed her hand to her mouth and cried when we couldn't find him.So all this was just an act."Nothing to say," I repeated quietly. "Alright."I let the silence sit.Reeves was near the door. Sofia had take
Kian's POV"You're bleeding again."I looked down at my arm. Sofia was right. The bandage had soaked through, a dark patch spreading through the white gauze as the one on my jacket earlier tonight. I pressed my hand over it and said nothing."Sit down," she said."I'm fine.""Kian." Her voice carried the weight of someone who has said a person's name in a tone for twenty years and knows exactly what it costs them not to listen. "Sit. Down."I sat. Not because she told me to. Because my legs had apparently made the decision before my pride could stop them.We were on the front step of the house. The night has gone very still around us, that stillness that comes after chaos, when everything has been used up and the world hasn't decided yet what comes next. Reeves was inside with Mara running the footage. His team was on the perimeter. There was nothing for me to do right now except wait and I had never been good at waiting.Sofia crouched in front of me with fresh gauze and started red
Kian's POV"Eliora!"The word tore out of me for the fourteenth time in as many minutes and the forest swallowed it whole, same as it had swallowed every other time. I stood at the edge of the tree line, chest heaving, and stared into the dark between the trees like staring hard enough would make her appear.She didn't appear."Eliora, please!" My voice cracked on the last word and I didn't care. Sofia was calling her name too, and Reeves, and the sound of all of us out here in the dark should have felt like something…. like action, like we were actually doing something….but it felt like nothing. It felt like screaming into water.I turned and went into the trees.The ground was uneven, roots catching at my boots, branches low enough to force me to duck every few meters. I turned on the torch I was holding but it barely made a dent. The beam just lit up the nearest trees and made everything beyond them look darker by comparison. I pushed further anyway.She just got lost. That's al
Eliora's POV"Just five minutes," I had told myself. "Just five minutes of air and I'll go back inside."That was forty minutes ago.My feet had carried me further than my head had permitted, and now I stood in the middle of nowhere with wet cheeks, a useless phone, and a jacket that had more holes in it than excuses. The cold bit through every single one of those holes like it had a personal vendetta against me. I pulled the torn edges together with my fingers and held them there, as if that would do anything. It didn't.Walk. Just walk. You'll find something familiar.I had been telling myself that for the past twenty minutes.The trees here all looked the same, tall, indifferent, crowding the path on both sides like they were watching me make a fool of myself. Branches scraped against each other overhead and every time the wind picked up, the sound turned into something that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand at full attention.I hated forests. I had always hated forest
Kian's POV"I really hate us."The door slammed shut.I sat with those four words in the dim room and let them do what they were going to do. There was no point trying to manage it. No point reaching for the composure I had been running on all night because there was nothing left of it. My shoulder was throbbing. The room smelled like antiseptic. And Eliora had just walked out saying she hated us…… and I didn't have a single argument against it.She was right….. As much as I would love to deny it I knew she was right.That was the thing I kept arriving at no matter which direction I approached it from. She was right. About the secret. About the three years. About me deciding what she could handle and dressing it up as protection. She was right about all of it and I had sat there with a bullet wound and the audacity to tell her she didn't think…..when the truth was I had been the one not thinking. I heard the front door closed I should go after her.The thought arrived but I didn't
Eliora's POVThe younger woman breezed into the kitchen, dropping into the chair at the end of the table with the energy of someone who had just done something impressive and felt entitled to relax about it. She reached past me for the fruit bowl without making eye contact."Sofia." The older woman's voice carried a single note of warning."What?" She bit into an apple, looking at me for the first time directly. "I'm just saying. The prodigal wife comes home." She shrugged. "Kian's been through enough.""That's enough," the older woman said firmly.Sofia scoffed and rolled her eyes.Okay… She clearly doesn't like me. She stood from her seat and stretched. Then looked at me with an expression that was almost pleasant."He's asking for you though," she said. And then….walked out.…I knocked once on the door, my palm sweaty. I had to rub it on my jacket multiple times. I breathed out when I heard him say come in.The room was dim. He was propped against the headboard, jacket gone, his
Kian's POV The blue light of the television screen was the only thing illuminating my office, casting cold, flickering shadows against the mahogany walls. Usually, this room felt like a fortress, a place where I held the world in my palm. Tonight, it felt like a tomb.On the screen, the news was b
Eliora’s POVMidnight in a hospital is not silent. It is a symphony of artificial sounds—the rhythmic, mechanical sigh of the ventilation, the distant, muffled squeak of rubber soles on linoleum, and the constant, mocking beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor.I lay flat on my back, staring at the ce
Kian's POV I didn’t wait for the elevator. I hit the stairs, the fire of adrenaline burning through the exhaustion that had plagued me for weeks. Detective Miller’s text was a beacon in the dark, and I followed it like a predator that had finally caught the scent of blood.The city outside was a b
Eliora's POV "Mummy!"The high-pitched, melodic cry shattered the heavy silence of the penthouse foyer before the front door had even fully clicked shut behind us. I didn't even have time to steady my footing on the polished marble before a small, sturdy weight slammed into my knees."Ezra!" My vo







