Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
EMMA
The path closed around us immediately, shadows pressing tight on either side. The deeper we went, the narrower it became, forcing us lower, our backs bent as though the tunnel itself demanded we crawl.
My heartbeat thundered against my ribs, frantic, each pulse too loud, too fast, like it wanted to claw its way out of me.
Why?
I wasn’t afraid of the dark. I never had been. So why the hell was my body acting like I was walking into my own execution?
My steps faltered, slowing without permission, like my legs had decided to betray me.
“Are you coming?” Caden’s question cut through the narrow space, and I could hear the undercurrent, the warning note.
I jerked my head too quickly. “Yeah. Sorry. I’m here,” I rasped, words tumbling out too fast.
Caden kept moving forward, steadily, like he trusted I would fall in line. I tried. I told my body to step, to follow. Instead, my legs locked.
My muscles froze, as if the cave had reached inside and flipped the off-switch.
“Emma?” His voice again, sharper this time. The syllables wrapped around me in a way you cling to when the world is slipping sideways.
Focus on it. Focus on him.
I dragged in a breath, shifted my weight, and forced one foot forward. But the instant I did, my whole body convulsed. My knees trembled. My chest cinched tight, squeezing until oxygen couldn’t get through.
“Fuck,” I choked as panic surged white-hot and merciless, flooding my veins like fire. My vision wavered, black creeping in at the edges.
“Thompson.” Caden’s voice was closer now, edged with command. “What’s happening?”
I couldn’t answer. Every inhale scraped my throat raw, each gasp cutting like broken glass.
Why the hell couldn’t I breathe?
The thought slammed into me like a body blow, knocking even more air from my lungs before it even had a name.
I’m suffocating.
“Thompson. Your breathing’s labored. Tell me what’s happening.”
I tried to answer, to anchor myself to that sound, but even though he was right in front of me, I couldn’t see him. Colors were bleeding into shadows until the tunnel turned liquid and he was just a shape, blurry, and dissolving.
I’m dying. I’m fucking dying here.
“Answer me.”
I opened my mouth. I felt my lips move. No sound came out. Not a word. Not a breath.
And then, darkness.
It didn’t descend; it swallowed me whole. No light, no shape, no sound but my own pulse hammering in my skull, a drumbeat too fast, too loud.
My eyes were open. They were. Weren’t they?
No—no, they were. But when I forced them wider, the cave disappeared, and before I could figure out what was happening, I wasn’t in the cave anymore.
The stink hit first: mildew, rot, rust. The bucket I used as a bathroom sat in front of me, chipped and corroded, as solid and real as it had ever been. Chains bit into phantom wrists. The atmosphere tasted like old metal and hands that weren’t mine.
I was back in Dave’s cellar.
“No… no, no. I’m not really here. I’m not really here.”
“Emma.”
A voice. Dave’s voice.
His hands clamped around my arms and I jerked away, hysteria ripping up my throat like barbed wire. “Don’t touch me!”
“Oh, but it’s not you I want, little witch.” His rotten stench filled my lungs, choking me from the inside out. “I only need you to make me rich and make her fall in love with me.”
He released me, and terror lit my veins because I knew where he’d go next.
Stop him, Emma! Move!
“Don’t touch her!” I screamed, lunging, but the chains yanked me back, hard, biting into my wrists until sparks burst behind my temples.
“Who? Emma, talk to me.” The foreign words pushed up against the haze.
Dave’s fist knotted into Amy’s hair, jerking her down. “I’ll take her even if she doesn’t want to. You have the power to make that less painful. Use it, witch.”
I broke. Sobs tore through me, every word splintered. “Don’t you dare hurt her. I will tear you apart!”
“Emma!” The other voice again, louder now. “Stop fighting me and listen to my voice. It’s Caden.”
“Caden…” I whispered, still staring at Amy, my heartbeat hammering like a drum. “Caden will come. He’ll get us out of here.”
Amy’s voice trembled through the haze. “Who’s Caden?”
I didn’t answer her. My voice cracked instead, ragged and small. “Caden will come for me.”
“Baby, I’m right here.” His tone was a growl of fury laced with desperation, like he was dragging me back by sheer will. “Come back to me. Wherever you are, come back to me, right now.”
Arms. Warm, solid arms. Around me. Real. Unyielding. Safe.
“He’ll come,” I mumbled, the words fracturing, looping helplessly. “Caden will come.”
“Nightcrawler.” That same voice now thundered, a command wrapped in anguish. “Fucking look at me.”
The cellar flickered, bled at the edges. Dave’s breath thinned, Amy’s sobs faded.
“You need to breathe, Emma. In, and out. Come on, baby, you’ve got this.”
The stench of mildew fractured. The chains rattled once, then dissolved. And then—
Warmth.
I blinked hard, lungs convulsing, and the last remnants of the cellar shattered like glass.
When my vision finally cleared, I realized I was shaking on the floor of my bedroom, curled in Caden’s lap with my knees tucked to my chest, my face pressed into his shirt.
His arms were iron bands around me, holding me against his chest.
“Breathe, Nightcrawler,” he whispered, softer this time. “That’s all you have to do.”
He drew in a slow breath, deep enough that I felt his ribs expand beneath my palms.
Then he let it out in a gentle exhale that brushed warm across the top of my head.
“Breathe with me,” he repeated. “Match mine. In…”
He inhaled again, letting me feel the rise of his chest, the steady pull of air.
“…and out.”
His breath flowed against my ear, unhurried, patient, a rhythm my body couldn’t help but fall into.
“That’s it, Emma. You can do this.”
My fingers clawed at his shirt, desperate for proof he was real. He didn’t flinch, didn’t pull back. Instead, he tightened his hold while his chin rested against the crown of my head, a weight that felt like an anchor to reality.
“You’re safe,” he said, his voice darkening to a low growl. “You’re in your room, with me. No one’s touching you. No one’s hurting you.”
Each word wrapped around me like a rope thrown into deep water. Slowly, my breaths evened, as the pain receded like smoke. The tremors in my hands dulled, but I stayed curled against him, wrung out and raw.
“Caden?” I sounded rasped, shredded, like I’d been screaming for hours.
“Right here, baby,” he murmured, his breath warm against my temple.
My eyes found his and clung to them, drowning in the impossible softness waiting there. “You’re here,” I whispered, still confused as hell about what had just happened. “You really came.”
“I never left,” he said, and the certainty in his voice hit me like a match struck in the dark.
Never left?
My spine snapped rigid. “What the hell happened?”
“You had a panic attack.” Caden’s tone was measured, but I heard the grit under it, the sound of someone holding himself in check. “I portaled us out of the cave.”
Instant shame clawed its way up my throat, hot and choking. Furious at myself that I’d let him see me like that, small, weak, and broken.
I bolted to my feet, the movement sharp enough to sting my muscles. I started pacing, my attention skittering anywhere but on him. “Gods,” I choked out under my breath. “I can’t believe you saw that.”
Behind me, I heard the quiet creak of floorboards as Caden rose too, but slowly, his movements careful, like someone stepping toward a wild animal that’s lost its trust.
“You were triggered by something in there,” he said, voice soft but threaded with steel. “The darkness. The small space. I can’t remember you ever being triggered by those at Crown.”
The words landed too close.
My knees gave a soft protest as I sank back down on my bed, elbows braced on them, head in my hands. The fear completely drained, leaving only the exhaustion of it all, and the mortification of him seeing me come undone.
“I’m so sorry I ruined our mission,” I mumbled, unable to look him in the eye.
I felt him move closer. “Do you really think I give a fuck about that?”
When I still didn’t look up, he crouched in front of me, close enough that I could feel the faint brush of his breath against my knees. He peeled my hands off my face, then raised my chin, and lifted my face until I had no choice but to meet his eyes.
“Where did you go, Emma?” His question was a soft demand. “What did your mind drag you into?”
Gods. I didn’t want to tell him. My chest ached with the memory of it.
But he’d stayed with me, he’d pulled me out of it. He had a right to know, and honestly, I was too wrung out to lie.
He leaned in, enough that his forehead nearly brushed mine, his breath warm and even between us, as if he could steady my heartbeat by sheer proximity. “Tell me.”
I exhaled, the sound trembling in the silence between us. “When I ran from Boston… After crossing the state border into New Hampshire, I…ran into a man. Human.”
The words scraped raw on the way out. How was I supposed to tell this story?
I glanced up at Caden. He was still watching me, his pupils blown wide, confusion pulling tight with a darker edge beneath it.
“This man…pretended to help me,” I forced out, my throat closing around the guilt I didn’t deserve, curling like barbed wire around every syllable. “My feet were blistered, and I was exhausted, so I…”
The next words were whispered, all of them laced in shame. “I let him help me. I was so thirsty, and I drank some of his water. Voluntarily.”
My gaze dropped, unable to meet his. My hands twisted together in my lap, nails digging crescents into my palms. “Turned out, the water was drugged, and he abducted me. Locked me in his cellar for two and a half days.”
"Motherfucker." Caden’s voice was a low, venomous hiss.