Chapter 31
IRIS
The Zebras are the first thing I see when my eyes open. My lungs are sluggish, still trying to remember what to do with air. Water clings to the back of my mouth, so I swallow. It tastes like chlorine, but at least I’m breathing. It’s shaky, but mine.
“Take it easy,” says the one in black.
I know this room. It mimics a hospital suite, but I’ve been here before. It’s the secret medical wing of the manor club. Last time, I was restrained. And yet…I’d felt safe. Wolf had been there. Now, I’m free, but I’ve never felt more lost.
“Not you two,” I rasp. I want to say more, but my throat still feels like it belongs to someone else.
“I wish we didn’t have to meet again,” says the other Zebra. “How are you feeling?”
Nothing’s broken, and I can breathe on my own.
I acknowledge them with a lift of my gaze, then sink deeper into the pillow.
I’ve come full circle.
It started here: my thrill, my chase, and the blur of adrenaline and lust. I thought I was falling for danger. But turns out I was falling for a man. And he was real.
“Where is he?” I ask them instead.
The Zebras exchange a glance as I press harder. “Where is he?”
They don’t answer. They just bow slightly and exit the room.
I push the sheets away and swing my legs over the side of the bed. I stand up. “Good grief…”
The vertigo hits like a slow spin. I grip the edge of the bed, breathing through it, my eyes shut, anything to stop the listing.
Then, hands steady me. I know the shape of them before I open my eyes.
Wolf.
I flinch and push at him. “Get away from me.”
He retreats without argument.
He’s still masked, but the image doesn’t hold. His shirt is wrinkled, the buttons misaligned, and his trousers look like they were grabbed in a rush. Wrong fabric, wrong fit. His hair’s also a mess.
This isn’t the polished phantom from the game. This is a man who rushed here the second he could.
And I don’t know what to do with that. Because even ruined, he still looks like someone I would have trusted. Admiration is still there, stubborn and sickening. But it drags something raw with it, something jagged that splinters across my chest.
As I set myself back on the bed, I force myself to meet the panes of his mask. “Why bother? I know who you are.”
He doesn’t answer right away. He just stands there, his hands at his sides. But then, he lifts the mask and sets it aside.
Marcus Lockwood.
The man I painted. The man I trusted with my body, my secrets, my reckless hunger for more. And the man who was never supposed to be real.
Relief and rage hit me in the same breath. I don’t know whether to reach for him or hit something.
Because he’s Wolf. And Wolf is Marcus. I don’t know when the mask left his face in the chaos, but it didn’t survive what he was willing to do to save me. Now I can’t make those versions of him fit together.
“How are you feeling?” he asks quietly.
Even his voice sounds different. It’s not the shadowy, sculpted bass from behind the mask but the voice I first heard in the clinic—flat at first, then in the end, almost kind.
It’s the voice of a man who’d once given up his overpriced cushion so a limping stray could rest on something kinder than cold concrete or packed dirt.
He continues, “I’m not asking to be polite. I need to know, Midnight.”
Midnight.
He’s still treating this as a game?
But it’s not that. Because as I search his eyes, I find the man looking as lost as I feel. Names don’t really matter right now.
“I’m fine,” I reply. “Weak. Dizzy. But I’ll survive.”
He nods. “I’m sorry this happened to you. I mean that.”
He’s ready to move, his hands reaching for me. Those hands that I knew too well. The hold I once trusted without question. The one that made him…my Wolf.
“Don’t,” I warn.
We face each other, look away, then face each other again. The moment trips over itself. But I don’t let it linger. “So, what was that? Was that meant to happen?” The question feels hollow, since I already know the answer. “I was dying in that tank!”
“I’m sorry. That fake wolf wasn’t part of the game.”
“No? How about the first time? At that ruin?”
He shakes his head.
“Who is he?” I demand.
“Just a man I’ve been chasing.”
I let out a breath, bitter and disbelieving. “You used me as bait?”
“I didn’t mean for you to be in real danger. Not like—” He falters. “I made a mistake. A big one.”
“You knew who I was. I sat in your clinic!” I snap. I don’t even know what to call him now. “Yet you kept that mask on like you were a stranger. Everyone else knew what part they were playing. I didn’t even know what story I was in.”
“You’re not a story, Iris,” he says. “You’re tied into everything I do. I didn’t plan that, but that’s the truth.” He meets my eyes and holds them as he says every word clearly, “You’re my place in everything else.”
It’s so absurd, so jarring, that I almost laugh. “I’m your place? And yet you were willing to let me get killed?”
“I’d die for you. I would’ve taken your place in that tank if I could. If I could undo the lies, I would. But I can’t. I can only ask you to forgive me.”
He stands there, real and flawed and still too much.
God! Even now, even knowing everything, some buried part of me wants him.
Because I haven’t forgotten the way he held me in that basement, when my lungs were screaming, and I thought that was the end.
No one’s ever held me like that. Not even Wolf.
And I hate that.
Because Wolf was a fantasy, and Marcus is the man who made me live it, then suffer the cost.
“I’d like you to leave, Dr. Lockwood.”
“Iris…”
My name barely makes it past his lips.
He doesn’t move. His eyes search mine, maybe not for forgiveness, just for something to hold on to.
“I said leave.”
For a moment, I think he’ll fight it. Because isn’t that what Marcus, the billionaire surgeon, does? Take charge. Fix the unfixable. Rewrite endings.
But then he nods. Just once. Already stepping back. “Someone will take you home. You’re safe now. I promise.”
But I don’t feel safe. I feel like I’ve been altered.
Because love doesn’t pick sides. And right now, it’s tearing me in half.