Chapter 32
MACKENZIE
Istumbled back, branches clawing at my arms like hooked fingers, moss slick beneath my shoes. My palms slapped against rough, wet bark, splinters biting into my skin as I fought not to go down.
Then something yanked me off balance.
I didn’t even have time to scream.
I kept my eyes fixed on Max’s lifeless form until I was dragged through the underbrush, my nails gouging furrows in the forest floor, scrabbling for anything to hold onto.
Rotting leaves filled my mouth and nose, damp earth grinding against my teeth.
Every instinct in my body shouted to fight, to run, but Jackson’s monster dragged me along as if I weighed nothing at all—like I was already dead weight.
My legs slammed into rocks as he dragged me, each jagged edge tearing into my skin. Hot lines of pain burned down my calves. I tried to scream, but more leaves muffled me, forcing the sound back down my throat until it tasted like blood and dirt.
I twisted and thrashed, nails tearing at his arm, heels scraping uselessly against the earth. My muscles spasmed with panic. I could feel myself weakening, every pull stealing another piece of my strength. I was losing this fight, and he knew it.
Jackson grunted in irritation. His fingers clamped tighter around my ankles, the pressure so fierce I heard a tiny, horrible crack.
“Stop,” I choked, the word scraping out of my bruised throat. “Let me go.”
He stopped.
For a heartbeat, the world went silent. No wind. No insects. Just the pound of my pulse roaring in my ears. Then his fingers slid into my hair, slow and deliberate, before he yanked my head back so hard a white flash exploded behind my eyes.
“Shut the fuck up,” he hissed, his voice so close I could feel every word vibrate against my skull.
Terror flared through me. My vision blurred. The trees around us seemed to lean in, their branches skeletal, watching me.
“Help!” I screamed, the sound tearing my throat raw. “Someone HELP ME!”
The words echoed into the dark, swallowed almost instantly, as if the night itself didn’t want anyone to hear me.
Somewhere behind us, something moved. I heard the soft crunch of leaves, a low creak, like wood bending. For one wild second, hope clawed its way up my chest.
“Please!” I sobbed. “Over here!”
Jackson went still, his grip tightening around my wrists now until my fingers went numb. Slowly, he lifted his head, listening.
The sound came again. It was closer this time. A wet drag across the ground, like something heavy being pulled.
He leaned down, his lips brushing my ear.
“No one’s coming for you,” he hissed. “You hear that? The woods are leaning in to listen.”
My heart pounded so hard it felt like it was trying to punch its way out of my chest. Jackson’s fingers dug into my scalp, nails biting into my skin. I could feel a slow, hot trickle where he’d broken the skin, blood snaking down the back of my neck.
“Please,” I whispered, the word barely more than a tremble.
He jerked my head to the side so violently my jaw clicked, a shiver of pain ripping through my skull. His other hand slid from my wrists to my throat, two fingers resting lightly over my pulse, like he was feeling the rhythm of my fear.
“No one,” he laughed, maniacally. “Do you hear someone coming for you?”
I forced myself to listen. But I did hear something. A faint, irregular tapping, like bone against bone.
My mouth went dry. The cold crept inward until I could barely feel my own body anymore. Just the hurt. Just the terror.
“HELP!” I screamed again, every last shred of air ripping out of me.
This time, the echo didn’t come back. The sound of my own voice seemed to hit something just beyond the treeline and die, snuffed out by the darkness’ gaping mouth.
But I knew someone—something was out there listening to us. Breathing. Waiting.
Jackson shifted, and for the first time, I felt a twitch of unease in him.
“Shit,” he muttered.
His hand fell from my throat. I took sweet, shallow, little gulps of air that felt like they might be my last.
I screamed again. He gripped my throat, harder this time.
“If you fucking scream again…” he whispered into my ear, “I’ll kill you right here.”
My body locked. It wasn’t the threat that broke me; it was the way he touched me. His hands moved with the easy precision of someone who had rehearsed this, not just on me, but in his head, over and over, until my body was more blueprint than flesh.
He adjusted his hold on my wrist, thumb pressing down on a nerve that sent a lightning bolt of pain up my arm.
“Jackson,” I said, the name flat, stripped of the question.
The deer mask tilted, those glassy black eyes catching the moonlight.
Then he ripped the mask off.
His grin was already waiting, stretched too wide, the skin at the corners of his mouth cracked and raw. His eyes were blown wide, fever-bright, skittering over my face as if he were checking items off a list.
“See?” he panted. “You do know me. So well, Kenz.”
My mouth suddenly felt dry and metallic, like I’d been sucking on a battery.
“What… what the fuck is going on?” I forced out the words, clumsy, tripping over each other. “What are you doing?”
For a second, something in his expression faltered. The grin slipped, his jaw tightening like the question hit a seam he’d been trying to hide.
He didn’t answer.
He just hit me.
The backhand came too fast to brace for. My head snapped sideways; my jaw popped, a bright spike of pain detonating behind my eyes. Sound thinned to a high ringing tone.
“I’m doing my job,” he spat, the words ragged, as if he were repeating something he’d been told. “I’m doing what I’m supposed to do.”
He yanked me upward by my arms, slamming my back against the tree. Bark dug into my shoulders. His fingers locked around my forearms like restraints.
“Why are you doing this?” I gasped, copper spilling over my tongue. “Jackson, why?”
His breath hit my face in harsh, irregular bursts. His eyes kept flicking—not just to me, but past me. To the dark. To the trees. To nothing. Like he was looking into a portal to another dimension.
“No, no,” he muttered, shaking his head once, sharply, like he was correcting himself. “You’re asking the wrong question. You always ask the wrong fucking questions.”
“Then what’s the right one?” The words scraped my throat on the way out.
He smiled again.
“Who I’m doing this for,” he whispered. “You need to learn. You need to fucking learn.”
“Learn what?” I pushed, even as my chest tightened. “What did I do?”
His gaze snapped to mine, pupils almost swallowing the irises. For the briefest second, I saw a naked terror there.
“You fucked him!” he exploded, the word ripping out of him, going through the trees like a shot. “You gave him everything. You married him!”
Each accusation sounded rehearsed.
“You think he knows you?” His laugh came out jagged, too high, cracking in the middle. “He doesn’t see you, Mackenzie. Not like I do. He never has.”
Up close, the truth was impossible to miss.
The sweat beading along his hairline. A tiny muscle jumped in his cheek. The tremor in his fingers. His eyes kept darting to the side, to the tree line, to the sky. Someone was watching us.
This wasn’t just about me.
This was a performance.
“You’ve been watching us,” I said.
The words came out flat and heavy. A verdict.
His entire body jerked in a small, involuntary flinch. Then he straightened, forcing his shoulders back, rearranging his face into something like composure.
“Of course I have,” he murmured, and now his voice softened, almost reverent. “That’s the point. That’s… that’s the work.”
“The work,” I repeated, numb. “What work?”
“They picked me,” he said, barely breathing the words. “Out of everyone, they picked me. Because I see you. Because I see all of you. The lies. The pretending.”
His grip tightened on my arms, not in anger this time, but in excitement.
“You think it’s an accident?” His voice shook with a kind of wild pride. “That I’m here? That I know where you are, what you do, what you say when you think no one’s listening? This is bigger than you and him and your stupid little vows.” His lip curled.
Something icy opened in my chest.
“Jackson… who are ‘they’?” I asked.
His smile turned inward, distant, as if he was hearing someone else speak just behind his own thoughts.
“The one’s paying attention,” he whispered. “The Alliance. The ones who actually give a shit about what’s rotting this place from the inside.”
The world Alliance sat between us like a third presence.
His eyes snapped back to mine.
“I finally matter, Mackenzie,” he said. “I finally get to do something that counts. You don’t have to understand. You just have to go through it.”
His fingers dug deeper into my arms, almost shaking with conviction now.
He wasn’t just unraveling. He thought this was him coming together, piece by piece, into exactly what they wanted him to be.
And I realized, with a nausea that hollowed me out, that somewhere in his head, this wasn’t cruelty.
It was devotion.
He gripped my throat again, breathing in my scent at the base of my neck.
“God, you always smelled so good,” he whined. He removed his hand from my throat.
I dropped to the ground, wheezing. My hands clawed at the dirt, useless and shaking as I tried to drag air back into my lungs.
“What do you want from me?” I spat, my voice raw.
“What I want doesn’t matter,” Jackson said, almost calmly. “What I’m meant to do does.”
He stepped closer, boots grinding into the earth inches from my hand. That sick pride twisted his features. He’d finally become the thing he’d been practicing in the mirror.
A monster.
“You’re ‘Legacy Thirteen’,” he went on, voice tightening with a horrible kind of excitement. “The endgame. I’ve got to keep you alive.”
Thirteen. The word landed on my chest like a bomb. Like the prongs on the star. My family crest. A crown and a curse.
He leaned in with a calm, sinister smile.
“But that doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun.”