Chapter 25
CARNAGE
RUBY
Ilock the door, twist the bolt so hard it scrapes metal, and stumble back until my spine hits the far wall.
My heart is pounding in a frantic, uneven rhythm, my breath coming too fast and too shallow to do anything but feed the panic tearing through me.
The room is silent except for the ragged sound I’m making, and the muffled chaos outside—Zane demanding, security refusing, my name snapped like a warning then like a plea.
I slide down the wall, knees pulled up and hands shaking so badly I can barely hold myself together.
And when it comes, the sobs that surge out of me feel like they’re ripping me from the inside out.
I never cry. Humming was always my coping mechanism.
Zane Fucking Draven has ruined that too for me now.
So what? From here on out, I’m going to be a slobbering fool every time I’m in pain? The thought makes me cry harder, because this pain? It’s real as fuck and relentless and twisting deeper with every breath.
Because the truth is spilling faster than I can hold it in.
I’m pregnant…because he replaced my pills…tracked my cycle, then sabotaged my choice.
And I loved him. I still—
God.
It hurts so much I can’t breathe.
I bury my face in my hands, choking on everything at once—rage, betrayal, grief, heartbreak, the humiliating realization that I saw the signs and still walked straight into the fire.
No, I wasn’t so blind as maybe stupidly hopeful.
Or willfully blind because every instinct I had from day one told me he was dangerous, obsessive, and wired to consume anything he decided was his.
How do you even come back from that?
Do I even want to?
My stomach knots when something inside me whispers yes.
I hate that voice. It should be outraged.
It should be screaming at me to plot revenge, to burn his mansion to the ground, to unleash my own feral storm against this rockstar monster, this shameless manipulator, this…
This man.
This man who is the father of my baby.
My breath stutters as a new sensation floods me, and God, it’s sharp and terrifying and reverent.
My hand drifts to my stomach before I can stop it.
My baby.
It’s the first time I’ve let myself frame it that way and something inside me lurches. I press my palm gently over my belly, fingers trembling as if the slightest pressure might disturb a secret still too new to understand.
A soft sound catches in my throat, grief and awe braided together.
And that’s when the door knob rattles. “Ruby.”
He’s not shouting or furious. Hell, he’s not unhinged. It’s soft and wrecked. And I find myself listening when I should be screaming.
“I know you hate me,” he says. “But I can’t bear to hear you cry. Baby, please. Come out and talk to me.”
I shake my head, even though he can’t see me.
His presence hovers and the air shifts. And then— A knock.
Again it doesn’t sound like Zane’s. Three gentle taps, a pause, then two more. “Ruby?”
Mama Draven.
Of course. She was his hinge before I came along. Makes sense she’d be here now when I’m…leaving.
Are you?
“Sweet girl,” she calls gently. “The air in this house changed. I felt it the moment the frequencies shifted.”
I almost laugh. Hysterically. Of course she did. “Go away,” I manage, voice hoarse. “Please. Just…just give me a minute.”
Another pause. Then, “Minutes don’t stop storms, sweetheart. They only delay the lightning.”
I wipe my face on my sleeve, shaky and soaked. “Please,” I whisper. “I can’t do this right now.”
There’s a soft shuffle of fabric and the quiet scrape of someone sitting on the other side of the door.
She isn’t leaving.
“You’re frightened,” she says softly. “And for good reason. My son is… intense. He was born with his father’s rage and my sensitivity. A cursed braid if I ever saw one.”
I close my eyes. “I’m not afraid of him hurting me,” I whisper. “I’m afraid of… how much of myself I’ve tied to him. How easy it was to lose every line I promised I’d never cross.”
“He adores you,” she murmurs.
In his own deranged, mind-bending way. “I know.” And God help me, the truth of it splits me open.
“Then why are you running?”
“Because he lied.” My voice cracks. “Because he made choices for my body. Because he tried to bind me to him with a baby I wasn’t ready for. Because I—”
My chest tightens so sharply I choke. “Because I adore him too…so much it makes me stupid.”
Mama Draven hums softly—the same strange, haunting note Zane responds to, the one I now realize she used to soothe him for years.
“Love is not stupidity,” she says gently. “It is vulnerability. And vulnerability terrifies the wounded.”
“I am not wounded,” I snap, wiping another tear.
“Honey,” she replies. “You don’t have to be carved open to bleed.”
I let out a broken laugh. “You’re not making this better.”
“No,” she agrees. “But maybe I can make you brave.”
Footsteps thunder down the hall and my stupid heart jumps.
Zane.
I hear the tremor in each step, the ragged inhale, the near-silent curse under his breath. He’s trying to calm himself, trying to hold it together, but failing in a way that cuts me.
“Move, Mama.”
“Not yet.”
“Move.”
His voice is shredded raw.
“Not until you breathe,” she says.
“I can’t breathe without her.”
Something inside me gives a painful twist. “Zane—” I whisper, even though the door is still locked between us.
Everything goes still. Then the soft sound of his palm pressing to the wood.
“Baby,” he rasps. “Please open the door.”
“I can’t,” I whisper.
“I know. I know. Just—let me talk to you.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Okay,” I say brokenly. “But I’m not unlocking it.”
Another pause. Another inhale. And then, “Ruby, I’m sorry.”
It’s Zane at his rawest. A drop-to-his-knees kind of confession.
“I’m sorry,” he repeats. “I fucked up. I fucked up worse than I ever have. I broke your trust. I crossed lines I never should’ve crossed. And I don’t deserve even a second of your forgiveness.” He breathes hard, uneven. “But I am begging for it anyway.”
Tears sting my eyes. “Zane—”
“No,” he chokes. “Let me say it. I need to say it.”
Mama Draven murmurs something soft and I hear her walking away, giving him space.
“You’re the only good thing I’ve ever had,” he says. “The only person who ever made me want to be better. You calmed my mind. You made the noise stop. You made me feel human. And I ruined it because I was scared.”
His voice breaks.
“You want to know why I did it? Why I replaced your pills? Why I kept track of your cycle? Why I—why I let myself imagine you carrying my child?”
I hear a thump, like his forehead dropped against the door. “Because I was terrified you’d realize you deserve someone normal. Someone stable. Someone who doesn’t fight darkness every day before getting out of bed.”
My chest aches so violently I press a hand to it.
“I never wanted to trap you,” he whispers. “I wanted a future with you so badly I twisted it into something…really bad. And I hate myself for it.”
There’s noise behind him—security maybe or Freddie, the band.
“Zane, maybe let’s give her space?” It’s Freddie.
“Don’t,” Zane snarls. “Don’t even try. I’m not leaving until she tells me to.”
I whisper, shattered, “I told you.”
The hallway falls silent. Then his breath shakes, guttural.
“If you walk away,” he says softly, “I won’t stop you. I swear it. I’ll die inside, but I’ll let you go. I won’t keep you here. I won’t touch you. I won’t even look at you unless you ask me to.”
I close my eyes.
“But please,” he whispers, voice breaking. “Please don’t walk away.”
My hands tremble. My pulse stutters. And my heart cracks on the fault line between fury and love. “Why didn’t you trust me?” I whisper.
“I did,” he says softly. “I trusted you more than anyone. I just didn’t trust myself not to lose you.”
A sob escapes me. “Zane,” I say weakly. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Let me see you,” he whispers. “Just that. I…I won’t touch you. I just… want to see you.”
My fingers hover over the lock. I’m terrified. Angry and beyond shattered. But God help me—I turn the bolt.
The door swings open immediately.
Zane stands there, his eyes red, chest heaving and beautiful hands trembling.
A man completely undone.
And then the part I never imagined…the rabid sincerity in his eyes.
“You’d really do that?” I whisper. “You’d let me go?”
I watch him fight for a full minute, the battle visible in every tense line of his body. I watch him, eyes slammed shut again as he works through the undeniable, manic I’d-rather-set-the-world-on-fire-than-let-you-out-of-my-sight emotion ripping through him.
And then a single tear slides down his cheek. Then another.
He doesn’t even try to wipe them away. He’s caught in the riptide of what he wants and what he believes I need. When he finally opens his red-rimmed eyes, his pupils are huge, swallowing the silver.
“Yes,” he says hoarsely. “If that’s what you truly want, Ruby. I’d do it.”
Don’t buy it. Don’t buy it. Don’t— “God,” I breathe. “You really would, wouldn’t you?” Even if it kills you.
“Even if it kills me,” he echoes.
And I realize I said the last part out loud.
A broken laugh slips out of me, dizzy and disbelieving, because the truth glitters there in his eyes, painful and undeniable.
“Come here,” I whisper.
Six-foot-three of tattooed, beautiful, devastated rockstar moves like I summoned him with a spell. He drops to his knees in front of me, hands gripping my hips, eyes shining with hope and terror.
“We need to have a serious conversation about boundaries,” I say quietly.
He nods immediately. “Yes. Absolutely. Whatever you want, baby.”
I laugh, a shaky, cracked sound. “I don’t believe that for a second.”
He flinches.
“I love this baby,” I continue, voice trembling. “I can’t wait to meet him or her or they or whatever the universe is cooking up for us. But I would’ve loved to have had a say in when they were conceived.”
His face collapses with guilt.
“So no more knocking me up behind my back,” I say, wiping my face. “Which, by the way, doesn’t even make sense. But neither does my life with you, so whatever.”
He lets out a broken, choked sound that half laugh, half snort. “I’ll spend the rest of my life making this right,” he whispers.
And damn it, against all logic and better judgment, a tiny traitorous part of me actually believes the unhinged bastard.
God help me.