جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 6

Chapter Two: What's Left of Her I didn't sleep. I sat on the edge of the bathtub most of the night with the tap running so nobody in the hall would hear me, and somewhere around five in the morning I stopped crying and just sat there, empty, listening to water go down a drain. When the sun comes up I get to my feet because staying on that floor another minute feels like agreeing to something. I walk to the mirror and make myself stand in front of it a long time before I can look at it directly. Frizzy hair pulled back so tight it's given me a headache since seven this morning. Glasses too big for my face, the kind Derek picked out for me himself, said they made me look "respectable." My reflection stares back like a stranger wearing my clothes. I lift my shirt. The scar sits low on my left side, pale and thick, the skin around it puckered where they stitched me back together. I press two fingers against it the way I used to when I needed proof I was still real. I gave a piece of

Chapter Four: I Will Think About It"Let's talk about your debt."Derek doesn't sit back down. He hangs half out of the chair, one hand braced white-knuckled on the armrest, staring at me like the floor under him has changed shape.It has."Ro—""Ghost."One word. I don't raise my voice to say it. I don't need to. He stops like a leash has caught him mid-stride, jaw still open around the rest of a name that doesn't belong to him anymore.He recovers the way desperate men always do — badly, and too fast."Ghost. I meant Ghost." He drags a hand down his face, and for a second the mask of a man who once owned every room he walked into slips, showing me something closer to the truth underneath it. "I know I don't have the right to ask anything of you. But I'm asking anyway."I open the file on the desk. Let him watch me read instead of watching him talk.He leans forward. His voice drops into that register I remember too well — the one he used when he wanted something and knew charm would

Chapter Six: I Don't Do MatesI step back the second my balance returns.The movement is sharp, almost violent, my heel scraping stone as I put distance between us. My wolf howls at the loss of contact like something's been physically torn out of my chest. Every inch I put between us costs something, a pull under my ribs that doesn't care what I want. I ignore it. I've spent five years ignoring worse.Kai doesn't chase the distance. He stands there with his eyes still burning red, fangs still down, breathing controlled in a way that tells me exactly how much effort the control is costing him. He looks like a man who spent years bracing for a hit he never fully believed would land, and now that it has, doesn't know what to do with his own hands."Don't."One word. I don't explain it. I don't owe him the rest of the sentence.His voice comes out rough when he finally speaks, testing my name like he isn't sure it still belongs to me. "Rose."I don't answer that either.The terrace doors