Chapter 29 #2
Zane muttered, “It probably spooked him. The man clearly didn’t run because of you. There isn’t a more beautiful woman in any world. But marking a member of a Faction isn’t something normal. The Nexus is usually the only one with a mark.”
I pulled him in for a kiss. “I don’t think it was fear. I think he was terrified of what the bond meant.”
Jet nodded slowly. “The claim.”
Oren’s voice dropped to a low, dark murmur. “He’s done running from this.”
I pushed myself to my feet, the men immediately circling me without thinking—protective, ready, furious on my behalf but so very careful with me. I loved them each with a ferocity that came from deep in my bones. And I felt their love for me.
All but one.
What I felt from him wasn’t love but obsession.
The cracked crown pulsed once more. Faint. But insistent.
A tug.
A direction.
“He’s not far,” I breathed. “The bond is… pulling.”
Zane grinned with wicked delight. “Good. Then we hunt.”
And with that, we ran.
We found him in the ribbed aquifer tunnels—stone arching overhead like the skeleton of some ancient beast. Torren stood at the end of the corridor, chest rising fast, hands curled like he didn’t trust what they might do.
The moment his gaze cut to me, something vicious and haunted flashed through it. “Don’t,” he rasped. “Stay where you are.”
Zane snorted. “You kissed our girl and ran like a scared little shit. You don’t get to give orders.”
Torren’s jaw flexed. But it wasn’t fear this time. It was fury. Cold, sharp, beautifully dangerous fury.
“That kiss was a mistake. Both of them," he said sharply. “Your mark appearing was a mistake.” His voice dropped to a razor’s edge. “I don’t belong in your bond.”
The cracked crown pulsed in response—an unmistakable throb beneath my skin.
Torren winced as if the bond itself tore into his ribs. His eyes suddenly snapped to mine.
He wasn’t looking at me like the shy, damaged man who fled last night. He looked at me like a predator who’d accidentally grown attached to the one creature he meant to kill.
“Reverie…” His voice dipped low. “You weren’t supposed to mean anything.”
Something in me stilled.
Jet stepped forward, fire in his eyes. “You don’t speak to her like that. I’ll cut your dick off, motherfucker.”
Nathan laughed cruelly. “He’s done it before, so I’d take him at his word.”
Torren’s mouth curled into a twisted smirk. It wasn’t gentle or vulnerable, but rather cold and cruel.
“There are lines you don’t cross,” he said. “And I crossed one by letting myself touch her.”
The air around him crackled—wrong, unstable, the way lightning behaves before it shatters into a storm.
Nathan snarled, “Just admit the bond chose your unworthy ass, and we’ll go from there.”
“No.” His laugh was cold. Sharp. A sound meant to cut. “It didn’t choose me. It chose the illusion.”
Zeke’s eyes narrowed. “Illusion?”
Torren’s gaze shifted away, jaw tightening—then the bond slammed through both of us again. The cracked crown flared as if it were tearing open. Pain shot through my chest.
And Torren—
He stumbled.
A strangled sound tore from his throat, half fury, half something dangerously close to grief.
He spat the words like venom: “I SAID NO!”
The air distorted.
His form blurred.
White-blond hair darkened—melting into ink-black. Shoulder-length became waist-length. Hazel eyes bled into an emerald so vivid it glowed. His face sharpened—aristocratic angles, the kind that made you want to step back… or step closer.
His entire posture changed.
Cold.
Commanding.
Elegance refined through cruelty.
He looked so similar to Oren that I felt my breath catch.
Oren appeared stunned, but not in the same way as the others—there was no fear or shock, or perhaps not only shock.
Recognition.
“Uncle?” The word tore out of him, hoarse, disbelieving.
Nathan snapped his head toward him. “What?”
Oren didn’t look at us. He couldn’t take his eyes off the man in front of us.
“That’s Trent Storm,” he whispered. “My father’s brother. The one who vanished during the war.”
The blood drained from Zane’s face. Zeke tensed, frost crawling up his arms. Jet looked like he wanted to rip the world apart.
Me?
I stared at the stranger who now wore my mark. And he stared right back—no hesitation, no fear, no hiding.
Only cruelty.
And something else.
Something he couldn’t kill, no matter how hard he tried.
Fascination. Obsession.
“Reverie,” he murmured, his voice blending velvet with steel. “You really shouldn’t have been so trusting…” A dangerous smile formed. Sinfully arrogant, meant to destroy. “…then again, your naivety was quite delightful.”
My pulse roared in my ears.
Oren growled, stepping forward. “How in the hell did you disguise yourself?”
Trent tilted his head, the picture of patient wickedness. “The serum gifts… many things. Things you’ll never understand with your small mind.”
His gaze slid to me. But there—there was the betrayal—the crack in his cruelty. “You were supposed to be a game,” he said softly. “You made yourself a problem.”
Then he lifted his hand. Reality twisted.
A force slammed outward—warping the stone, bending the air, throwing my men back even as they fought against it.
He held my gaze.
Not with regret.
With an almost affectionate cruelty. Like a man admiring the bruise he left behind.
“You shouldn’t want me in your bond, Reverie,” he said. “You shouldn’t want me anywhere near you.”
My chest ached with the bond’s pull. The cracked crown burned.
“Too late,” I whispered.
For a split second—one heartbeat—his expression cracked.
Not soft or tender.
Just real. And so very haunted.
Then he vanished in a ripple of warped light. Leaving the echo of a broken man, a lie, a monster—and a bond that refused to let him go.