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THE THINGS WE HIDE

Penulis: Laney L. R.
last update Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-09-17 00:44:25

ZACH

Her skin is warm under my hands, like silk stretched over lightning. She doesn’t speak as I kiss her, just trembles slightly when my lips brush her collarbone. The soft lamp by the bed throws gold across her shoulders, and when I look up at her, there’s something breaking open in her eyes, something deeper than want. She looks like she’s trying to memorize the shape of this moment before it shatters.

And maybe that’s what I’m doing too.

I’m not rough with her tonight. Not like the other times where everything boiled into desperation and punishment. This is something slower, like we’re trying to crawl inside each other and stay there, untouched by the rest of the world. Her sundress is still bunched at her hips, and the fabric feels like her: soft, too sweet for the mess we’re in. And yet here she is, begging me with every breath to keep going, to love her like it’s the last chance I’ll get.

I bury my face in the crook of her neck, breathing her in. My voice is ragged when I whisp
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  • Whispers of Loyalty   EPILOGUE

    ZACHThe house should have been silent.Instead, it breathed.Every shadow, every room, every corner felt like it was pulling in a breath it would never release. A house built on blood and loyalty, now hollowed out by the one thing even war couldn’t prepare me for.Grief.Real grief.The kind that doesn’t stab — it drags.It pulls you under, slow and suffocating, until drowning feels like mercy.I sat on the floor of our bedroom with my back against the wall, knees drawn up, Alana’s necklace twisted in my fist. It cut into my palm each time I squeezed, but I didn’t stop. I wanted the pain. Needed it. Needed something sharper than the emptiness eating its way through my ribs.Her blood was still under my fingernails.I couldn’t bring myself to wash it off.It wasn’t gore.It wasn’t horror.It was proof she’d been real.Proof she’d lived.Proof she’d died in my arms.I closed my eyes, and the memory spilled across the darkness like a film I couldn’t shut off.Her breath hitching.Her fi

  • Whispers of Loyalty   FEAR

    ZACHThe storm rolled in fast.Not the kind that rattled windows or scattered branches across the lawn.The other kind—the quiet storm, the wrong storm, the one where everything goes too still before it breaks.We knew he was coming.Gia had felt it.Niko had sensed it.I’d felt it in Alana’s pulse, in the way her breaths had turned shallow as the night deepened, in the way she kept looking over her shoulder like someone was whispering her name from the dark.But when it happened, it was still too fast.Too sudden.Too goddamn inevitable.We were in the old courtyard, moving between dead ivy and broken stone, heading toward the west wing where our intel said L had funneled his men. Alana was ahead of me, steps sharp, shoulders drawn tight beneath her coat. She moved like she knew where he would be. Like she’d been here before—maybe in a dream, maybe in a nightmare, maybe in a destiny she never asked for.“Alana, slow down,” I murmured.She didn’t.She couldn’t.Her hand brushed the st

  • Whispers of Loyalty   REALITY

    ALANAThe house felt different when we re-entered it.Not safer.Not familiar.Just smaller.As if every room was narrowing around us, funneling us toward a single collision point none of us could see but all of us could feel. Even the air felt thinner, like the walls had learned how to breathe—and were waiting for one of us to falter.Zach walked ahead of me, his hand wrapped around mine so tightly it should’ve hurt.It didn’t.His grip wasn’t possessive.It was protective.Desperate.A silent promise forced through the cracks of fear.Gia and Niko followed behind us. I could hear the shift of their weapons, the muted rustle of gear, the whispered tension riding the line between instinct and dread.Whoever L was—whatever he wanted—he wasn’t hiding anymore.He was circling.Watching.Choosing his moment.And every step I took deeper into the house, I felt him like a shadow slipping under my skin.Zach squeezed my hand once, sharply.“You’re quiet again,” he muttered without turning.

  • Whispers of Loyalty   PROMISES

    ZACHThe engine hummed beneath my hands, but it did nothing to ground me.Nothing could—not when the image of L standing in that chamber replayed behind my eyes like a sickness I couldn’t shake.Alana’s breathing beside me was the only steady thing in the world.Soft. Controlled.Too controlled.She stared out the window as we drove, her fingers tangled together in her lap. Not nervous. Not frightened.Thinking.And that terrified me more than anything L had said.She didn’t look shattered.She looked sharpened.Like the prophecy wasn’t crushing her—it was sculpting her. Into what, I didn’t fucking know. But every time she went quiet like this, I felt something slipping just out of my reach.“You’re too silent,” I muttered finally.She blinked out of her thoughts and glanced at me. “You want me to scream instead?”“I want you to talk to me.”“I am.”“No,” I growled, gripping the wheel tighter. “You’re talking around me. Skirting. Editing.”Her lips pressed into a thin line. She turned

  • Whispers of Loyalty   PROPHECY

    ALANAL stepped out of the tunnel like he’d been waiting for this moment his entire life.Tall. Composed. Dressed in black that didn’t catch the light. His face still partly shadowed, but the ring—the one with that carved, impossible “L”—caught the glow of our flashlights in a way that made my stomach twist.He moved like a man who wasn’t afraid of dying.Like a man who believed he couldn’t.Zach shifted fully in front of me, body coiled with a violence that vibrated through his skin. Every line of him screamed lethal intent, but his voice—God, his voice—was low and controlled.“You stay back,” he murmured, not looking at me.“You don’t get to do this alone,” I whispered back.His fingers twitched behind him, brushing mine—just once. A silent admission. A tether.L’s gaze slid over us, unhurried, assessing, cold.“The bloodline stands before me,” he said, voice smooth as glass. “Both halves of it.”Zach’s jaw flexed. “Say what you want to say before I put you in the ground.”A soft la

  • Whispers of Loyalty   ALIVE

    ZACHDawn didn’t rise so much as bleed.A low red haze pushed across the horizon, staining the sky with a color too close to warning. I’d barely slept—two hours at most—but the lack of rest didn’t slow me. It sharpened everything. My senses. My instincts. The threat crawling underneath my skin.L was moving.The prophecy was tightening.And Alana…She was walking straight into the crosshairs with me.I didn’t know how to breathe around that.I stood in the hallway outside our room, leaning against the wall, hands braced on my hips, head down, trying to calm the storm building in my chest. But nothing settled. Nothing eased.The door behind me opened.Her.Alana stepped into the hall, hair tied back, dressed in tactical black. Beautiful and lethal in the same breath. Her eyes found mine instantly, searching me the way she always did—like she knew when something in me was breaking.And something was.Not for me.For her.“You didn’t sleep,” she said softly.“Neither did you.”She came c

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