CHAPTER 3: The Man Who Already Ruined Me Once

POV: Imani

As soon as the door closed, he pulled away from my arm so quickly that his fingers left my skin almost before I could register the action.

For a moment, he didn’t say anything. He walked to the far side of the small room and turned his back to face me, his hands pressed against a table that was littered with maps. His shoulders looked tense and were pulled high as he stared down at the papers. The room felt cramped and warm, especially with the fire that was crackling away, it was too hot in here after being out in the cold for such a long time, and I could feel my coat starting to stick to my back. I wanted to take it off, but my fingers stayed curled around the strap of my bag. I wasn’t going to start making myself feel comfortable here, especially not when I still didn’t know whether he wanted me in this territory or wanted me gone.

“Did you know?” he finally broke the silence, still not looking at me.

“Know what?” I replied, confused.

“That it would be me.” He asked, finally turning to face me. His gaze was intense, like he was starting to see through me, and holding mine for so long that I had to fight the urge I was getting to look away. “Did your family plan this? Is that what this is, some sort of…”

“Are you serious right now?”

“I’m just asking a question.”

“Right, but you’re also accusing me of something big.” I threw my bag onto the nearest chair with so much force it landed with a thud. “There’s a big difference, and you know it. You’re just too wrapped up in your anger to see it.”

“I have every right to be angry.”

“Of course you do.” I crossed my arms, pressing my lips together tight for a second before forcing myself to meet his eyes again. “But let me throw a question back at you. Did you know? When you agreed to this arrangement, not that I know when that was, did you already know my name?” I raised my eyebrow.

“No,” he admitted.

“Then how on earth could I have planned this coincidence when you weren’t even aware it was possible?”

He didn’t respond, and I watched the way his jaw worked as he struggled to come up with something to say. His hands clenched into fists at his sides, his knuckles tightening before he deliberately loosened them again. He dragged in a slow breath through his nose, but his shoulders remained rigid.

“This arrangement was made before my father died,” he eventually said, his voice coming out low, his gaze dropping briefly to the floor before returning back to me. “Before any of this happened. Before I ever had a say in what transpired in this territory. I didn’t choose you. So just be aware that none of this was my choice.”

“Neither did I.” I fired back, feeling my shoulders start to drop but I was fast to keep them steady.

“You expect me to believe that?”

“I don’t expect you to believe anything.” My voice came out sharper than I intended, but maybe that was what I needed right now. Because if I softened now, he might mistake it for guilt, and I had absolutely nothing to feel guilty about. “You know what I expected? I thought I would walk into that hall and meet a stranger. A stranger I would quietly dislike and then just have to deal with. What I didn’t expect was to find out that the one night I allowed myself to think was mine was actually part of some transaction the whole time.”

His reaction was immediate as his eyes shifted, and his lips parted slightly before he caught himself. The anger returned a second later, but that was too late because I had already seen what was underneath it.

“If I had planned this,” I went on swiftly, “heaven knows I would have done a better job than ending up in a stupid debt. I would’ve made sure my little brother wasn’t nearly dead two winters ago from a fever that your family’s medicine could barely save him from. I would have made sure my mother didn’t have to hand me over like I was a piece of cargo. Just so you know, that’s how your sister referred to me, in case you weren’t aware, like a piece of cargo.”

The room fell eerily silent, the only sound being the fire behind him cracking, and carrying through the space between us.

“Malik,” he said, testing the name of my baby brother on his wretched tongue.

“My brother. He’s sixteen. Lucky to be alive thanks to your family, which is why I climbed onto that truck without putting up a fight against those annoying guards.” I met his gaze and held it intensely, refusing to let my eyes drop first. “So no, I didn’t plan any of this at all. I had a debt to repay, a sick brother, and a mother who’d reached the end of her rope. That’s simply the reality of my situation. There’s no version of this story where I’m the one in control.”

We both stood there, letting a quiet moment stretch out between us as I felt the hotness of the room starting to get under my skin. He looked at me without speaking, his eyes moving across my face before settling back on my eyes. I could see him trying to make sense of everything I had just said, and for once, I didn’t rush to fill in the silence.

“You didn’t tell me your name,” he said finally, in a softer voice. “Not that night. I gave you every chance but you didn’t. I only ever knew about it from when I heard it, and even then you told me to forget I ever heard it.” He said, pain sounding in his tone

“But you didn’t share your name either,” I said, intentionally skipping the part where I told him to forget he ever heard my name.

“I asked for yours though.”

“You asked if I wanted to tell you. And I said no on purpose, Zane, because names are how people find you. I’ve spent eight years of my life since our world crumbled to the ground ensuring that no one could find me unless they already had a right to. It wasn’t about you personally. It was about me holding onto the one thing in this world that was mine, that nobody could take away from me because they’d never even know it existed.”

“And now I know it existed,” he said, his voice low.

“Exactly! Now you know.”

We stood there close enough that I could still smell the smoke and pine exuding from him, and my body recalling things I was trying my possible hardest to forget. The warmth of his body from that night came back to me in flashes I didn’t want, along with the feeling of his hands wrapped around me and the sound of his breathing close to my ear. I tightened my fingers against my arms and forced myself to stay where I was. He was watching me too, his eyes moving over my face before dropping briefly to my mouth, and I hated how quickly my body noticed every single little thing he was doing.

“I remember exactly what you feel like,” he said quietly, almost under his breath.

“Please don’t.”

“You asked me not to lie.”

“I didn’t ask you to say that,” I said.

His hand lifted, slowly and deliberately, stopping near my jaw. The sight of his fingers so close to my skin made my breath catch in my throat, and I hated myself for not stepping back. I stayed there in my spot, watching his hand hover between us, remembering exactly how those same fingers had touched me before. His gaze dropped back to my lips for a heartbeat, and something in the way he licked his bottom lip tightened in my chest before he jerked his hand away, his fingers curling against his palm.

Suddenly, the door burst open without a knock. A man with sandy looking hair rushing in, and gasping for breath, one of his hands still resting on the doorframe as if he had sprinted all the way here. He quickly scanned the room, glancing between Zane and me, his expression shifting from anticipation to shock. His mouth opened, then closed again, and for a second it was as if he seemed to have forgotten what he had come in to say.

“East watch,” he said, trying to catch his breath. “Something’s inside the perimeter.”

Zane’s entire demeanor changed in an instant. His shoulders straightened, his expression hardened, and his voice turned Ice cold and flat. “Infected?”

“That’s the strange part,” the man replied, his eyes darting back to me for an instant. I couldn’t read his expression at all. “It’s walking right past the patrols. Not attacking. Not even looking at them. It’s almost as if it doesn’t see them at all.”

A chill moved through me, raising the hairs along my arms despite the heat filling the room. “Where’s it headed?” I asked.

The man tensed, his jaw clenched tight. “Here,” he said firmly. “It’s heading for the hall.”