Chapter 6
Micah
Katana’s not supposed to look at me, and she knows it. Marcy shoved her over to the far end of the cafeteria, made her sit with her back to me, as if that would erase the connection we have. Threads don’t snap that easily. Not when they’re stitched in blood and inevitability.
Now she’s looking at me over her shoulder, using Marcy’s distraction to her advantage.
The room fades to gray. All I see is her. Big hazel eyes locking with mine, daring me, begging me, belonging to me. Her lips part, soft and pink. She sees the smirk tugging at the corner of my mouth, the fire I don’t bother to hide. It’s full of ownership. Possession.
Because she’s mine.
I watch the fight play out across her face—the war between sense and instinct, fear and fascination.
When she spins back toward her tray, I almost laugh. The choice was already made the moment her eyes lingered. She knows it, and so do I.
My fists curl under the table. Rage crawls up my spine, sharp and cold, every time I picture Marcy’s hand on her arm. The way she dragged Katana away from me, shoved Katana’s true nature down like she’s just another patient to be processed and controlled.
I want to snap Marcy’s wrist for daring to touch her. Tear the tendons from her arm for daring to come between us.
But not yet.
Not in this room full of eyes.
Solitary wouldn’t just take me from my girl—it would put me back in a box, and I’ve spent too much of my life in boxes.
Patience. That’s what makes me different from the rest of these drooling fools. I can wait. I’ve been waiting for ten years inside Holloway’s walls.
And now, my purpose has been revealed. Her.
But my patience has limits. And if anyone here—Marcy, Bruce, or any of the gawking sheep in gray sweatpants—tries to keep her from me again, I’ll decorate these walls with their blood.
I lower my head and push the food around my tray. My appetite has shifted. The hunger I feel now has nothing to do with the slop they serve in this place and everything to do with her.
Katana doesn’t know it yet, but she’s already mine.
And before long, this entire institute will know it, too.
The need to be near her squeezes the air from my lungs. It’s an obsession with no boundaries.
I sit and watch the other patients, eyes sweeping the cafeteria until I lock on one of them. Someone who mouths prayers to a god that doesn’t answer. He keeps glancing my way, shaking under the weight of his own small, useless rebellions. He thinks his looks are hidden. He’s wrong.
I lean forward until my knuckles whiten against the tray. For ten years, I learned how to pull a string and watch the puppet convulse. It’s an art. It’s control.
Slowly, deliberately, I fix my eyes on him.
At first, nothing happens. Just the scrape of his chair and the low hum of his voice.
Then his breath shortens. The slight scratching of his nails on the tray grows frantic.
He swallows, but cannot make the sound work.
His head turns a fraction toward me—and that look, the pleading panic—feeds something cold inside me.
I don’t blink.
His face contorts. A sound builds in his throat like a sob squeezed into a vise, and then it snaps free in a high, keening wail. Heads turn in his direction. A nurse rushes over, hands awkward and useless. He shakes and twitches, his eyes wild. His tray tips and stew splashes across the table.
I sit back and let the room settle around the echo of his collapse. They swarm around the broken, animal-like child, trying to calm him.
Satisfaction blooms inside me. I’ve made my point. Ownership is a language here, and he just learned a new word.
Heat burns in my chest. I stand, smooth my hands against my sweatpants, and begin moving toward her.
The kid is still freaking out, which has unsettled other residents, as I knew it would. Marcy is drawn to a row where two men are pushing each other. She intervenes, authoritative and loud. It’s the perfect distraction—a slice of chaos to keep her busy.
I slip through the crowd like smoke. Marcy doesn’t notice me. Not when she’s all teeth and commands. Bruce is busy trying to break up a fight. No one pays attention to me.
Katana’s shoulders are small in the gray fabric that swallows her. Long hair spills in a loose tangle down her back. The way it catches the fluorescents—dark threads against rumpled grey—is an offering.
I move behind her. My fingers hover a breath away from the fabric, feeling the warmth of her skin through the sweatshirt. I let my hand trail lower, the motion casual. The kind of touch that looks accidental but isn’t.
My fingertips brush a loose strand of hair resting on the sweatshirt. It’s dark, silky, and smells faintly of cinnamon. I curl my fingers and lift the strand of her hair, slipping it into my palm. It’s a small thing—a thread. But trophies consist of small things.
The world narrows to the piece of her in my hand: a single brown filament, tremulous and stubborn. I tuck it into my sleeve where the heat will keep it close and private.
Across the room, Marcy shouts, and Bruce hauls a man to his feet. The noise climbs, the room swells with motion.
Katana eyes the chaos, oblivious to the theft. Her shoulders are still, a woman who has learned to survive by trying to be invisible.
I stand behind her for a heartbeat longer, watching the line of her spine, the angle of her jaw.
As if she feels me, she looks up. Her breath hitches. Her fingers curl around her tray like an anchor.
My lips brush her ear as I whisper, “Don’t worry, Katana. I won’t hurt you.”
Her face registers understanding and shock in a single, terrible flash.
Then I straighten, the movement smooth, before I turn and walk away, heading back to my prison to store my treasure where no one will see it.
I slide the strand of hair to my palm as the corridors open like a river of dull faces that part without meeting my eyes. Bruce hurries behind me, a trembling man in his hold.
“You good, Micah?” he asks.
I nod. He moves past me with his charge, heading for the elevator. I know exactly where that guy will end up. Solitary.
A grin spreads as Bruce disappears. He thinks I’m contained. He’s wrong.
Instead of heading to the elevator, I turn toward the stairwell at the end of the hall.
The strand of her hair is warm against my skin, the smallest proof that she belongs to me in a way I can keep.
I press it to my tongue for a second—a stupid ritual that makes it more real—then tuck it deep into my pocket where no one will see.
Possession is sometimes a slow thing. It grows in the dark, two threads braided into one. Tonight, I’ve taken the first stitch.
The rest will follow.