جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 20

Ryker’s POv The bond was gone, but I could still feel her.It was three in the morning, and I was standing at the window of my room, staring out at the darkness like it held answers I couldn't find. The estate was quiet. The staff had gone to bed hours ago. Even the guards had retreated to their posts, leaving me alone with the silence and the ache in my chest.The ache that wouldn't go away.I pressed my palm against the place where the bond had been. It was still there. Not the bond itself. That was gone, severed clean in front of the entire pack. But something remained. A phantom. A ghost. A whisper of connection that refused to die.My wolf stirred.You feel it too.I didn't answer. He had barely spoken to me since the ceremony. When he did, his words were sharp and cold, meant to cut.She's scared, he said.I closed my eyes. "Don't."Don't what? Don't tell you the truth? You felt her

Olivia’s POV I told him to leave. This time, he listened. Ryker stood at the edge of the clearing with blood drying on his face and his hands still clenched at his sides. He looked at me like he wanted to say something. Something that would make it better. Something that would fix what he had broken. There was nothing he could say. "I'm sorry," he said. The words landed flat. Empty. Just like they had in the car with my father. I turned away. "Don't." "Olivia—" "Don't." I faced him again. "You don't get to apologize. You don't get to explain. You don't get to stand here and act like any of this changes what you did." He flinched. "I told you to go. I meant it." He held my gaze for a long moment. The phantom bond pulsed between us, faint and unwanted. I felt his regret. His guilt. His pain. I didn't care.

Ryker’s POV I returned to my room with Daniel's words still echoing in my head.Protect her. Whatever you have to do. Whatever it costs. Protect her.I closed the door and stood in the dark, my hands clenched at my sides. The phantom bond pulsed faintly in my chest, a constant reminder that Olivia was out there somewhere, afraid and alone, running from men who wanted her dead. And I was standing in my father's house like a coward.I walked to the basin and splashed cold water on my face. The cut above my eye had reopened during the fight with Cassian, and I hadn't bothered to clean it properly. I hadn't bothered to do anything except move forward. That was all I knew how to do.The room was too quiet. The whole estate was too quiet. It felt like the walls were closing in on me, like the air itself was pressing down against my chest. I had spent my entire life in this house, and yet it had never felt less like home than it did right

Olivia’s POV My father had been lying to me my entire life. And when I finally cornered him, he still wouldn't tell me the truth. We found shelter in an abandoned cabin deep in the forest, far from the main roads and the scouts who still hunted us. Cassian had checked the perimeter twice before he allowed us inside, and even now he stood by the window with his eyes fixed on the trees, his hand never far from his knife. The cabin was small and dusty, with a collapsed roof in one corner and a fireplace that hadn't been used in years. But it was shelter, and shelter was the only thing we could afford. I sat on the floor across from Daniel with my knees pulled to my chest, watching the fire Cassian had built cast shadows across the walls. My father looked older than I had ever seen him. The bruises on his face had darkened to purple and black, and his lip was still split from whatever the scouts had done to him before Ryker freed him. But it was his eyes that told the real story. They w

Ryker’s POV The screams started before dawn. By the time I reached the lower levels, three guards were already hanging from the ceiling of the interrogation room, and my father was just getting started. I stood in the doorway with my arms crossed and watched. I didn't flinch. I had learned long ago that flinching only made things worse. Marcus moved between the prisoners with the slow, deliberate patience of a man who had all the time in the world. He wasn't angry in the way most men got angry. He didn't shout or rage or lose control. He got quiet. He got precise. And then he started cutting. "I asked you a simple question," he said, stopping in front of the first guard. The man's name was Harren. He had served the estate for twelve years. "Who came through your post last night?" "I don't know," Harren gasped. His face was swollen, and one eye had closed completely. "I didn't see anyone. I swear it." Marcus sighed like a disappointed teacher and gestured to the guard beside him.