Chapter 46 #2
Waiting for me to return.
For the first time in hours, a smile tugged at my lips—small, private, nothing like the cold mask I'd worn in the prison.
How far did you get, naughty Tiger?
I picked up the book carefully and placed it aside.
Then I reached into my pocket and set a small velvet box on the nightstand.
Her gift for saving my life tonight.
Tora, how will I ever thank you enough?
I slipped into bed beside her, and the mattress dipped beneath my weight. She stirred slightly but didn't wake—just shifted closer, her body instinctively seeking my warmth even in sleep.
Mami's hand had been trembling too, right before I set her on fire.
Reaching toward me.
Telling me how much she loved me.
I shoved that away and reached for one of Nyomi's braids, winding it around my finger. The texture was soft.
This is real. My Tiger is real. You are here, not there. It is over.
I let the braid slip free.
Wound it again.
And let it go.
That calmed me more than standing outside the door.
Oh, Tora. I will never let you leave me. Never. You are my protection. You are my pleasure. You are my peace. You are my love.
My lips found her shoulder.
I pressed a kiss there—soft, reverent, barely a brush of skin against skin.
I kissed her again.
And again.
I truly craved to bite her, but I couldn’t let her wake up to pain.
You’ll feel my teeth later.
I pressed my forehead against Nyomi's shoulder, breathing her in.
You saved me.
The thought settled into my bones.
You saved us all.
Thirty more snakes. Sako had managed the entire network. Recruited them. Trained them. Gave them their orders. Reported back to my father through a system so simple it was almost elegant.
They had a special way of messaging my father. Two spaces between the period and the last word of every sentence. That's all it took. That tiny signal told the Fox the text message was authentic, that it came from one of his snakes.
For so many years, that's how they'd communicated.
I kissed her shoulder again, harder this time.
Stop. She's safe. You found them in time. Because of her.
And I was going to spend the rest of my life making sure she knew what that meant.
Get some rest. Soon we will be hunting the Fox.
We were going to use Sako’s little text message system against our father. The hackers would wait for his response.
And if that didn’t work, then surely my hackers would track his call to the Butcher.
Soon. We’ll have our vengeance very fucking soon.
I closed my eyes and the darkness wrapped around my tortured soul, and I thought sleep might finally claim me.
Then my Tiger moved.
A small shift at first—her fingers tightening around mine, her breathing changing rhythm. I felt the moment consciousness returned to her body, the way her muscles tensed slightly before she recognized where she was and who she was with.
"Kenji?" Her voice was thick with sleep, soft and uncertain in the darkness.
I kept my eyes closed. "I'm here, Tora. Right here."
She turned in my arms.
Slowly, I opened my eyes, and even in the dim moonlight I could see her gaze searching my face.
Looking for something.
Damage, maybe.
Evidence of what I'd done tonight.
No. Don’t read me, Tora. Not tonight. Don’t assess. I don’t want you to truly see who I am. . .
Yet, she studied me.
She assessed.
And a minute later, I watched her expression shift as she found the horrors that I’d committed.
You shouldn’t have looked, Tora. Because if this scares you. . .if you want to run. . .I will trap you.
Her bottom lip quivered.
I didn't know what she saw exactly—the haunted look in my eyes, the tension in my jaw, the way I couldn't quite meet her gaze for more than a few seconds. But whatever it was, her face softened with something that looked like heartbreak.
She didn't ask if I was okay.
She already knew the answer.
Instead, her hand came up to touch my jaw, and her thumb traced the line of it.
Gentle.
Exploring.
Grounding.
Next, she whispered, “I love you, Kenji.”
I blinked.
Her words were soft, warm, and everything I didn't deserve after what I'd done tonight.
Still, so many emotions cracked behind my eyes.
No. Do not cry. She’s seen enough. You can’t. Not here. Not now. You are the Dragon. Don’t. . .
"You're shaking," she whispered.
I was.
I hadn't realized it until she said it, but my whole body was trembling—fine tremors running through my muscles like aftershocks from an earthquake I couldn't escape.
Her palm pressed flat against my chest, right over my heart. "Stay with me. Whatever you're seeing right now, you're not there anymore. You're here. With me. In our bed."
Our bed.
She said it like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like we'd been sharing this space for years instead of days.
Like she belonged here.
Like I belonged here too.
Sadness cracked within the splinters of my heart.
"Tora. . ." Her name came out broken and so wrong. There was too much need bleeding through the syllables.
"Shh." She shifted closer, and slid her leg between mine. Then, she pressed her body along the length of me until there was no space left. No room for ghosts or the sounds of screams. "I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere."
Her fingers moved from my jaw to my hair, threading through the strands. Her nails gently dragged against my scalp. The way my mother used to do when I was small and couldn't sleep. The memory surfaced unbidden, and with it came a pressure behind my eyes that I hadn't felt in years.
No. Stop. You can't. . .
"You don't have to be strong right now, Kenji. Not with me. Never with me."
Do not cry. If you start, you won't be able to stop. . .
"Whatever happened down there. . ." She pressed a kiss to my forehead. Tender. Loving. "Whatever you had to do. . ."
Another kiss, this one to the bridge of my nose. "It doesn't change how I feel about you."
My throat closed.
My chest seized.
The pressure behind my eyes became something sharper.
Hotter.
Demanding release.
Dragons don't cry. Dragons don't break. Dragons. . .
"I've got you," she whispered, and her arms wrapped around me, pulling my head down to the curve of her neck. "Let go, Kenji. I've got you."
I can't. I can't. If I let go, I'll fall apart completely. And then what sort of man would I be for her. . .If I let go. . .
"You're safe here."
Safe.
When was the last time I'd felt safe in this way?
The very concept was foreign.
When was the last time anyone had held me like this—not because they wanted something, not because they feared me, but simply because they loved me?
My mother.
When I was a kid.
Before she became a ghost of herself.
Before the Fox hollowed her out and left nothing but an empty shell.
The pressure crested.
I buried my face in Nyomi's neck and breathed her in—black amber and ripe plum—and I let myself feel it.
All of it.
The horror of what I'd done.
The grief for people I'd once loved.
The guilt that no amount of justification could wash away.
The relief—God, the relief—that it was over.
That I was here.
That even though I’d killed innocent people to punish the snakes, at least someone on this planet still loved me.
My Tiger was warm, alive, and mine and I hadn't lost her to my father's snakes.
My arms tightened around her until I knew it must hurt, but she didn't complain.
Didn't pull away.
Just held me tighter in return.
"That's it." She breathed against my hair. "I'm here, and I'm not letting go."
A sound escaped me.
Not a sob.
Not quite.
Something between a breath and a groan—a release of pressure that had been building for hours. For years, maybe. Decades of walls cracking under the weight of a single woman's tenderness.
"You're okay." She moved her hands in slow circles across my back. “I love you, and you're okay."
The words washed over me like warm water.
Like absolution I hadn't asked for and didn't deserve.
"I love you, Kenji. All of you. Even the parts you think are too dark to love."
She can read me too well. I must stop this. . .no one on this Earth should know me. . .better than me. . .
And then I let one tear spill from my eyes.
One.
I wiped it away immediately.
She probably knew, but hopefully she hadn’t truly seen it.
“I love you.” She pressed her lips against my temple.
I closed my eyelids.
Another tear left.
Before I could wipe it away, she kissed it.
No.
I sneered.
Then, she kissed the other closed eye.
I shivered.
Then, she kissed the bridge of my nose.
And the corner of my mouth.
The trembling in my muscles slowly eased.
The pressure behind my eyes receded—not gone, but manageable now. Contained. The memories that had been clawing at the edges of my mind retreated to the shadows where they belonged.
Not erased.
Never erased.
But held at bay by the warmth of her body against mine. By the steady rhythm of her heartbeat beneath my ear. By her voice, soft and sure, repeating words I was only beginning to believe.
No more tears came, even though more wanted to fall.
My Tiger had seen enough for now.
Yet. . .she kept soothing me with her words as if trying to lure those tears out.
"I love you."
"I'm here."
"I'm not going anywhere."
"You're safe."
"I've got you."
Neither of us spoke after that.
We didn't need to.
Her fingers kept moving through my hair in slow, rhythmic strokes. My breath kept finding the curve of her neck. The moonlight kept shifting across the sheets as minutes bled into each other.
I listened to her heartbeat.
Steady.
Strong.
Alive.
And I let that be enough.
No words. No confessions. No promises I wasn't sure I could keep. Just the weight of her body against mine and the simple miracle of being held by someone who had seen my darkness and chosen to stay.
The ghosts didn't leave.
They never would.
But they quieted.
They retreated to the corners of the room and watched us from the shadows, and for the first time tonight, I didn't feel their hands on my throat.
I felt hers.
Warm.
Gentle.
Real.
I didn't know how long we lay there like that—her holding me, and me letting myself be held.
Minutes.
Hours.
Time had lost all meaning somewhere between the prison and this bed.
But slowly, gradually, I felt something shift inside my chest. The jagged edges of what I'd broken tonight began to smooth. The weight I'd been carrying since I walked out of that shower began to lift.
Not completely.
Some weights I might carry forever.
But enough.
Enough to breathe again.
Enough to feel something other than horror.
I lifted my head from her neck and looked at her.
Moonlight caught the angles of her face—the high cheekbones, the full lips, the dark eyes that held no judgment. Only love. Only patience. Only a steadiness that made me want to weep with gratitude.
"How did I survive before you?" The words came out raw. Honest in a way I rarely allowed myself to be.
She smiled—soft, sad, and knowing. "You didn't survive. You just existed. There's a difference."
Yes. . .there's definitely a difference.
Before her, I had been surviving. Moving through days like a shark through water—always forward, never stopping, because stopping meant thinking and thinking meant feeling and feeling meant drowning.
But this?
This warmth spreading through my chest?
This peace settling into my bones?
This wasn't survival.
This was something I'd forgotten existed.
This was life.
This was love.
"Nyomi." I cupped her face in my hands and traced the curve of her cheekbones with my thumbs. "I need you to know something."
She widened her eyes.
"What you did tonight—finding those snakes, unraveling that network—you didn't just save me.
" I pressed my forehead to hers, breathing the same air she breathed.
"You saved everyone I love. Everyone I'm responsible for on this island.
Hundreds of people. You gave me a chance to end this war before the Fox destroyed everything. "
Her breath hitched.
"There were thirty more snakes, Tora. Thirty more people who would have eventually plotted to kill me, Hiro, Reo, the Fangs, the Claws, but especially you.
Thirty snakes who were waiting for the right moment to strike.
And you found them. You. My Tiger. My Heart.
You. In one night. With nothing but your instincts and your courage. "
"T-thirty more?"
"Yes. Sako was managing the entire network. My father had brainwashed him into thinking that his spying was keeping me safe." I pulled back just enough to look at her. "And you burned it all down in a single evening."
Her eyes were wet now and glistening in the moonlight.
"I didn't know," she whispered. "I just. . .I followed the trail. I didn't realize—"
"That's what makes you extraordinary." I kissed her forehead. "You don't even understand how brilliant you are. How invaluable. How utterly irreplaceable."
A tear slipped down her cheek.
I caught it with my thumb and brushed it away. "I'm going to spend the rest of my life proving to you what you mean to me, starting now."
Her brow furrowed slightly. "Starting now?"
I glanced toward the nightstand where the velvet box sat waiting.
Her gaze followed mine. "What's that?"
"Your gift. Open it."