Chapter Fifteen:

Aurora's POV

"What did you just say?"

My voice comes out wrong. Too thin. Too sharp. I can hear the crack in it, and I hate that he can probably hear it too.

Sebastian doesn't turn around. He's still facing Damien, his shoulders a hard line against the smoke curling up from the wrecked car. His hands are at his sides, but his fingers are curled into fists so tight I can see the knuckles straining white even in the dark.

"Sebastian."

Nothing.

"Look at me."

He turns then. Slow. Controlled. Like every movement costs him something he wasn't planning to spend tonight. When his eyes finally meet mine, they're not the cold, calculating eyes I saw at the dinner. They're something else. Something rawer. Something that looks almost like grief.

"You heard me," he says.

"I heard words that don't make sense."

"They make perfect sense. You just don't want them to."

My chest is doing something painful. My ribs feel too tight. My lungs aren't working the way they should. I take a step toward him, and my ankle almost gives out, an aftershock from the crash, probably, but I catch myself before he can reach for me.

"Explain," I say. "Right now."

Behind him, Damien groans. He's pulling himself up against the steering wheel, blood running from a cut on his forehead. He's alive. Unfortunately.

Sebastian glances back at him once, then returns his attention to me. "Not here."

"Yes, here. You don't get to say something like that and then—"

"Aurora." His voice drops. Not angry. Something worse. Tired. "You're bleeding. You can barely stand. And that man is going to wake up in about thirty seconds and start screaming for lawyers. So unless you want to explain to the police why you're standing in the middle of an industrial district at midnight with two men and a wrecked car, we need to move."

I want to argue. Every part of me is screaming to plant my feet and demand answers right now, right here, consequences be damned.

But he's right.

I hate that he's right.

"Where?" I ask.

"My car. Lucas is waiting."

I look at the black SUV idling a few feet away. The damage from the collision is minimal: a dented fender and a cracked headlight. It ran Damien's car off the road like it was nothing.

"You could have killed us both," I say.

"I could have." He doesn't apologize. "I didn't."

I stare at him for a beat longer than I should. Then I walk past him toward the SUV.

Lucas is standing by the back door. His face is carefully blank, but his eyes flick over me once, cataloging the damage: the cut on my temple, the way I'm favoring my left ankle, and the blood smeared on my hands from gripping the door handle too hard during the spin.

"Miss Sinclair," he says, and opens the door.

I slide in without a word.

Sebastian gets in on the other side. The door shuts. The world outside goes quiet. Lucas climbs into the driver's seat and pulls away without waiting for instructions, like this kind of thing happens often enough that he knows the protocol.

Maybe it does.

The silence in the car is suffocating.

I press my back against the leather seat and close my eyes, trying to get my breathing under control. My hands are still shaking. I fold them in my lap and squeeze them together until the trembling stops.

"You're angry," Sebastian says.

"I'm confused. There's a difference."

"You're both."

I open my eyes and turn my head to look at him. He's sitting perfectly still, his profile sharp against the glow of passing streetlights. He doesn't look like a man who just ran someone off the road. He looks like a man who has done harder things and learned how to carry them quietly.

"How do you know?" I ask.

He doesn't pretend to misunderstand. "I don't know everything. I know enough."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I have right now."

My jaw tightens. "You said, 'Just like he did before. "That means you know I died. That means you know I came back. How, Sebastian? How do you know that?"

He's quiet for a long moment. Long enough that I start to think he's not going to answer at all.

Then he says, "Because I've been getting messages too."

My stomach drops.

"The same person?" I ask.

"I think so." He finally looks at me. "They told me things. Things I couldn't verify at first. About my parents. About Vincent. About a woman named Elena Sinclair who died too young and left behind a daughter who would one day matter more than anyone expected."

My mother's name in his mouth feels like a hand reaching into my chest.

"They told you about me," I say slowly.

"They told me to find you. To watch you. To wait until you woke up."

"Woke up?"

His eyes hold mine. "Their words. Not mine. I didn't understand what it meant. Not until tonight. Not until I saw your face when you read those documents. You weren't just surprised, Aurora. You were confirming something. Like you already knew, but you needed proof."

I can't breathe.

"Who are they?" I ask. "The messenger. Who are they?"

"I don't know."

"You have to know something."

"I know they've been contacting me for three months. I know every piece of information they've given me has been accurate. I know they wanted me at that dinner tonight, and they wanted you there too." He pauses. "And I know they just told me Damien was going to kill you in that car. The same way he did before."

The words land like stones dropped into still water.

Before.

He keeps saying that word.

"You believe them," I say. "You believe I died. You believe I came back."

"I believe something happened that doesn't fit any logic I was raised to trust." His voice is quieter now. "And I believe you're not the woman Damien thinks you are. You're not the woman anyone thinks you are. You're something else. Something that scares the hell out of him. Something that apparently scared Vincent enough to want your family erased."

I turn away from him and stare out the window. The city is sliding past in streaks of light and shadow. My reflection stares back at me, pale, bruised, and shaken.

I came back to take control. To rewrite the story. To be the one holding all the cards.

I never expected someone else to already be holding a hand I didn't know existed.

"Where are we going?" I ask without looking at him.

"Somewhere safe. Somewhere Damien and Vincent can't reach."

"And then?"

"Then we talk. Properly. No interruptions. No messages. Just you and me and whatever truth we can piece together." I close my eyes again. For the first time since I woke up in this second life, I don't know if I'm the hunter or the hunted, and I'm not sure Sebastian knows either.

Sebastian has been getting messages too. For three months. About Aurora. About her mother. About everything.

Someone has been pulling strings on both of them from the very beginning.

And now they're driving toward a truth neither of them may survive knowing.