LOGINElena’s heart thudded in her chest as she descended the narrow stairwell. The air grew heavier with every step, as though the building itself was closing in on her. Each footfall was a reminder that time was slipping away time, and Alex.Please be okay.Her mind kept returning to him his strength, his determination. They had made it through worse before, but this felt different. The tension, the stakes it was as if every move was being orchestrated by an unseen hand. Every breath they took was a second closer to danger.At the bottom of the stairwell, Elena found herself in an expansive underground chamber. The walls hummed with the cold, mechanical pulse of the facility. Steel doors lined the perimeter, each one sealed tight.But there was a dim glow coming from the far corner.A console.Elena hesitated, a sick feeling gnawing at her stomach. She could feel it something was wrong. She wasn’t supposed to be here, but the path had led her straight to this moment.Taking a deep breath,
Elena’s hands were slick with sweat as she pressed herself against the cold steel wall of the hidden corridor. Every nerve in her body screamed that the shadows were moving, that danger was closer than her own heartbeat.Alex’s presence behind her was steady, solid, grounding. His hand found hers instinctively, a silent reminder that she wasn’t alone even when the world had become a labyrinth of betrayal and deception.“Are you okay?” he whispered, his voice low, almost reverent.Elena swallowed, her throat tight. “I will be… once we get through this.”He nodded, scanning the narrow passageway ahead. The faint hum of machinery echoed around them like the growl of a predator. They had to move. Each second wasted increased the chance that Vera’s agents or worse would find them.Then she saw it.A figure, barely visible in the dim glow, shifting unnaturally along the walls.Richard.Her heart sank. “He’s here.”Alex’s jaw tightened. “Stay close. Don’t let him separate us.”Elena pressed
The ocean wind howled against the shattered balcony doors as I stepped into the dim room, my pulse still racing from everything that had happened today. The storm outside had sunk the entire estate into a low, trembling gloom, the kind that made every shadow feel alive.I wrapped my arms around myself, unable to stop replaying the moment Richard’s men cornered us how close we came to losing everything. How close Alexander came to dying for me.Again.The floor creaked behind me.I didn’t need to turn to know it was him. His presence folded through the air like warmth after a long winter.“Elena.”His voice low, steady, unbearably gentle slid down my spine.I turned slowly. Alexander stood in the doorway, shirt torn, a thin line of dried blood brushing the side of his temple. His hair was wind-tossed, his jaw tense, his eyes burning with something that was no longer anger… but something deeper.Worry. Fear. And something he still fought to hide.“You should be resting,” I whispered.“S
Elena’s POVThe night felt strange too quiet for a world that had been trying to swallow us whole.Alexander held my hand as we walked down the long corridor of the underground wing he’d refused to let anyone near since the attack. The lights were dim, casting gold shadows across his face. He looked exhausted, jaw set, eyes stormy, that silent fury he carried like armor.But beneath it, I saw something else.Fear.A fear I had only seen in him twice—when I almost died, and when Richard Hale almost took me again.“Alex,” I whispered, squeezing his fingers. “You’ve barely spoken since we left the council room.”He didn’t stop walking, but his grip tightened.“Because I’m trying to hold myself together.”My breath caught. “Talk to me.”He stopped abruptly, turning to me. His hands came to my shoulders, grounding me as he exhaled slowly.“Elena… they want you to step down as the key witness,” he said softly. “To hide. To disappear until the trial is over.”I blinked. “Disappear?”He nodde
Elena’s POVThe world felt strangely slow when Alex’s fingers tightened around mine, grounding me in a moment that would have sent the old me spiraling. The room was dimly lit by the golden evening sun slanting through the windows of the safehouse his coastal hideout that had become our strange sanctuary. But nothing inside me felt calm.Not when Richard Hale’s voice still echoed in my skull.“You’re not Elena Dawson. You were never meant to survive Project Rebirth.”A lie.A half-truth.A weapon.I didn’t know yet.My breath shuddered, and Alex noticed instantly. Of course he did. He always did.“Elena,” he murmured, stepping closer, his other hand lifting to brush a strand of hair from my face. “Look at me.”I did and I hated that he could see everything. The fear. The confusion. The splintering pieces of my identity that I had fought so hard to reclaim.“I don’t know who I am anymore,” I whispered.His jaw tightened, sharp and protective, but his eyes softened. “You’re mine,” he sa
Elena’s POVI’d always believed the quiet after a storm was supposed to feel peaceful like a soft breath after chaos.But standing on the balcony of Alex’s penthouse, staring at the glittering city lights stretching endlessly beneath me, I felt anything but peaceful.The world looked calm.My heart didn’t.My pulse thud-thud-thudded with the weight of everything that had happened, everything we had survived… and everything we still didn’t understand.The truth about Project Rebirth.Richard Hale’s disappearance.The shadowy men who still watched us from places we couldn’t yet see.The mark on my wrist that still burned sometimes a reminder of what they tried to turn me into.And Alex…God.Alex.He was the one constant in all of it fierce, protective, unyielding, infuriating, and the only man whose touch could quiet my mind and set it on fire at the same time.But now…The door behind me clicked open, and even without turning, I felt him.Alexander Knight didn’t walk into spaces he sh







