Chapter 16 #2
The gates open and I walk the stone path with slow, controlled steps. Each step feels monumental. The door opens.
There she is.
Her gray silk pajamas are sleep rumpled, hair loose and messy, and her gray eyes are wide with surprise, exhaustion, and something underneath both that hits me like a fist to the sternum. She’s gorgeous, wrecked, and mine.
We stare at each other, two weeks of absence collapsing into the three feet between us.
“You going to invite me in, or are we doing this on the doorstep?”
She flinches at my voice — the real one, unfiltered, no modulator, no comm. She steps aside.
“You came back.” She gives me a tired, fragile smile.
“I promised.”
I step inside and take in the house. Glass and marble and nothing personal. Cold, haunted, exactly the cage I imagined. Not a single photo. Not a single piece of evidence that a human being grew up here.
I turn to face her. She’s trembling, the shadows under her eyes deep enough to drown in, and the guilt is radiating off her like heat — visible in the way she can’t meet my eyes fully, and the way her fingers twist together.
She’s looking at me like I’m water in a desert. Hungry and terrified at the same time.
“You look tired.”
“I didn’t sleep much.”
“Nightmares?”
“Something like that.” She looks down. “I wasn’t sure you’d come back.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” I step closer to feel the warmth coming off her skin.
She lifts her head. Our eyes lock. “You don’t need —”
“You think I’d just leave you?”
Her pupils dilate. “I don’t know what I thought.”
She’s not meeting my eyes. The guilt is eating her alive. She thinks she betrayed me by holding a stranger on a motorcycle three hours ago. She thinks she did something wrong by feeling alive with someone who isn’t me.
“Ivy.” I let my voice drop. “Come here.”
She closes the space between us without hesitation, looks up at me, her breathing shallow, her heart rate visible in the pulse at her throat. She’s waiting for something — judgment, punishment, she doesn’t know what.
Then I see it. The moment the guilt wins.
“I did something.”
“What?”
“I —” She’s deciding how much to confess. “I went out tonight.”
“Where?”
“Out. I needed air. I needed to feel —”
I cup her jaw with one hand. My thumb finds her pulse point and I feel it hammering, fast enough to scare a doctor.
“Feel what?”
Her eyes close and her lips part. “Alive.”
“Did you?” I press my body against hers. She nods, eyes still closed. “Good.”
Her eyes fly open. “Good?”
“You’ve been dead for seven years, Ivy. If you need to feel alive —” I lean in and press my lips against her neck, just below her ear. “I’m not holding you back.”
Over my dead body. She’s mine. Ghost is lucky it’s me.
She leans into me and her whole body softens, surrendering to the proximity, to the heat.
“Killian, I —”
My thumb presses against her lips, silencing her. “Whatever you think you need to confess, don’t. You’re allowed to live, Ivy. Even if it’s without me, Little Moth.”
“But —”
My hand moves from her jaw to her throat. The weight of my palm rests against the fragile architecture of her neck. It’s a claim that doesn’t need to be spoken.
“You want to go out at night with strangers?” My voice drops lower. Our faces are so close our noses almost touch. “Go. But when you come back?” I feel her swallow against my palm. “You come back to me.”
Her knees buckle slightly and my other hand goes to her lower back, holding her upright.
“I don’t understand you,” she whispers.
A smile pulls at the corner of my mouth, dragging the scar with it. “Keep it that way.”
I place a soft kiss on her forehead before I release her and step back. She sways for a second before she finds her balance.
“I’m here to get you out and start hunting.” My voice shifts to operational and she can see the change in me. “How soon can you be ready to leave?”
“Leave?”
“The city. We disappear. Remember the plan? Unless you want to wait for that detective to figure out your lie.”
“I need a few days. Arrangements. And there’s someone —” She slaps her hands over her mouth, eyes going wide.
I hold the smirk. Raise an eyebrow. “Someone?”
“No one. Just logistics.”
I look at her like I believe her. I don’t. She knows I don’t. The lie hangs between us like smoke.
Let’s make this interesting, Little Moth.
“Three days. Then we disappear. Together.”
She nods, relief flooding her face because she thinks I bought it.
“If Reeves comes back —”
“I’ll handle her.”
“I know you will.” I head for the door, grab the handle, and pause. “Ivy.” I don’t turn around. “Whatever and whoever made you feel alive tonight —” My jaw tightens. “Remember who you’re leaving with.”
I open the door and step out. Behind me, I hear the moment her knees hit the marble floor.
Three days. She has three days to say goodbye to Ghost, to mourn a man who isn’t dead, to choose between two versions of me without knowing they’re the same. And I’ll be watching. Because that’s what I do. I watch her. I protect her. I want her so badly it’s rearranging my organs.
She doesn’t know she’s choosing between two masks, not two men. And I’m terrified — genuinely, bone-deep terrified — that when the masks come off, what’s underneath won’t be enough.