Chapter 16
ALENA
Morning was a rumor on the horizon, that blue-gray hour when even ghosts seem tired of their own haunting.
The cursor blinked at me like an accusation I couldn't answer.
Write.
So I did. Fingers moving mechanically across the keys, back aching from hours hunched over my desk, eyes burning dry from refusing to blink.
The story poured out in fevered bursts—the way it always did when the whispers grew impatient, when they crowded too close and demanded their due.
They were everywhere tonight. In the corners where the shadows thickened into almost-shapes.
Behind me, cold breath on my neck. Inside my own breath, tangling with my thoughts until I couldn't tell which words were mine and which were theirs.
And still—beneath all of it, louder than the whispers, more insistent than the scratches—one thought pounded through my skull like a second heartbeat.
Where is he.
I reached for my phone, the movement automatic, almost unconscious. How many times had I done this in the last twelve hours? Twenty? Fifty? I'd lost count somewhere around dawn.
The screen lit up the dim room in cold blue light. No new messages. No missed calls. Nothing from him.
No "home safe."
No "landed."
No "you alive?"—the usual joke he sent only half-joking, the one that meant I'm thinking about you, I'm checking on you, you matter.
Silence.
An entire universe of silence stretching between London and New York like an ocean I couldn't cross.
I opened my chat with Lucy instead, thumbs hovering over the keyboard, heart beating too loud in my ears.
Have you talked to Drogo?
The words stared back at me from the message box, simple and damning.
I imagined her answer before she could give it.
Yes.
No.
What happened?
Why?
But underneath all of it, a different terror slithered in through the cracks in my composure—if I asked, it meant I was admitting something had happened.
That the sex the other night—the touches, the closeness, the way his voice had broken when he said my name, the way he'd held me after like I was something precious—might not have meant what I thought it did.
Maybe it was nothing for him. Just scratching an itch he'd been ignoring for seventeen years. Maybe the word mine meant something different for him.
Maybe it was just another almost-thing in a lifetime of almosts, another night that would fade into awkward silence and forced normalcy.
My throat closed up.
I deleted the text before I could send it.
Not because Lucy wouldn't understand—she would, she'd been watching us dance around each other for years.
Because I couldn't stand the possibility that she'd reply with something gentle and pitying like "He's probably just busy" or "Give him time.
" I didn't want gentle. I wanted answers.
And if the answer was that last night meant nothing to him… I'd rather bleed than hear it out loud.
The sting came a second later—hot, sharp, burning up my spine like a brand.
I gasped, arching forward in my chair.
Another scratch carved itself just beneath my shoulder blade, fire and ice and shame in one long deliberate line. My eyes filled before I could stop them. Tears slipped down my cheeks, useless and quiet and frustrating.
"I'm writing," I whispered to the empty room, voice cracking. "I'm writing, I swear."
The whispers didn't care. They never did.
They weren't just impatient anymore either. They sounded almost smug, satisfied in a way that made my skin crawl.
"He left you," one hissed, low and delighted, words scraping against the inside of my skull. "He always leaves."
I typed harder, fingers slamming the keys, ignoring the lie even as it burrowed deeper. But the next scratch came faster, deeper, as if punishing me for hoping. As if they could smell my weakness, my fear, my desperate need for him to be okay.
So I kept typing. Hours vanished into the rhythm of keystrokes and pain. My tea went cold, skin forming on the surface. My back curled tighter, shoulders hunching to protect wounds that wouldn't stop bleeding. Words spilled like blood on snow—dark, stark, impossible to take back.
When my hands finally stopped shaking enough to trust them, I stood—legs weak, head buzzing with exhaustion and wine and panic—and walked to the kitchen.
The sandwich was still there.
His sandwich.
Wrapped carefully in plastic, cut into triangles the way he always did because he'd rolled his eyes when I said they tasted better that way and then made every sandwich triangular since. Idiot. Perfect, infuriating, missing idiot.
The plate sat untouched on the counter where I'd left it this morning, hours ago, a lifetime ago.
Waiting.
Just like me.
"Fuck this," I muttered, throat burning with unshed tears.
I reached past the sandwich and grabbed the bottle of wine instead, the glass cold and slick against my palm. I didn't bother with a glass this time. The first swallow was sour and sharp, burning all the way down. The second went easier. By the third, I'd stopped tasting it at all.
A hot flash tore across my thigh.
I hissed through my teeth, hand gripping the counter hard enough to hurt.
Another scratch. Deeper this time, cutting through denim and skin like neither mattered. My knees almost buckled.
"Fine," I whispered to the empty apartment, to whatever watched from the corners, to the ghosts that owned more of me than I did. "Fine. Take your pound of flesh. I'll write."
I went back to the laptop. Wine. Words. Whispers. Repeat.
Time folded in on itself, losing meaning.
It was afternoon now—pale sunlight trying to crawl through the blinds like something unwelcome, like it knew it didn't belong in this cold, haunted space.
My eyes burned. My bones ached. That hollow beneath my ribs grew wider and wider until it felt like I might fall into it and never climb out.
Where is he?
The question circled endlessly, a vulture waiting for something to die.
The silence became a sound of its own. A roar. A storm inside my head drowning out everything else. Drogo never vanished. He stormed, he sulked, he brooded in that quiet, intense way of his—but he didn't disappear. Not from me. Never from me.
Unless he wanted to.
Unless that night… meant more to me than it did to him.
Unless he'd finally figured out what I was—a burden wrapped in pale skin and bad dreams, a woman haunted by things she couldn't escape, couldn't explain, couldn't even fully understand—and decided he was done being the shield for my monsters.
I stood again, the movement jerky, uncoordinated. The empty wine bottle dangled from my fingers.
Kitchen. Sandwich. Same plate. Same patience.
I stared at it for a long moment, vision blurring at the edges.
A fresh line of fire slashed across my wrist.
That one broke me.
The scream ripped out of me before I knew it was coming—raw, hoarse, scraped up from somewhere deep and animal. Angry. Exhausted. Done.
The bottle left my hand and shattered hard against the wall.
Glass exploded like a gunshot. Red wine bled down the white paint in slow, accusing rivulets, spreading like wounds, like proof of something breaking that couldn't be fixed. I stared at it for a second, chest heaving, watching the destruction I'd caused with my own hands.
Then I sank to the floor amid the shards.
The tile was cold under my legs, grounding in its discomfort. My hands covered my face. I shook—great, wracking sobs tearing through my chest until it hurt to breathe, until my throat was raw and my ribs ached from the force of it.
"Where are you?" I choked out into my palms, voice breaking into pieces. "Drogo, where the fuck are you?"
The words echoed in the empty kitchen, unanswered.
A thousand answers spiraled through my head, each one worse than the last.
He's hurt.
He's dead.
He's with someone else.
He woke up and realized you were a mistake.
He left because loving you costs too much—costs blood and scars and nights spent holding you through nightmares that aren't your fault but aren't his responsibility either.
Maybe he just wanted out.
Maybe silence was the easiest way to tell me.
The thought split me open, cracked me down the middle like the wine bottle against the wall.
I curled in on myself on the kitchen floor, back pressed against the cabinets, surrounded by broken glass and spilled wine, the sandwich still untouched on the counter above me, whispers pressing in from every corner like spectators at an execution.
"I don't want them," I whispered to whatever listened in the shadows. "I don't want the stories. I don't want the scratches or the whispers or any of it. I just want him."
My voice cracked on the last word.
"Please," I added, quieter, to no one and everyone. "Please just let him be okay."
The apartment didn't answer.
Neither did he.
I pulled my hoodie tighter around myself—his hoodie, the one I'd stolen months ago that still smelled faintly of him.
Of cologne and smoke and us. The scent hit me like a fist to the sternum.
I buried my face in the fabric and sobbed harder, breathing him in like I could summon him back through sheer desperation.
The tears kept coming.
The scratches kept burning.
And Drogo stayed silent.