Chapter 43
Octavia
Silas is dying in front of me.
There is no softness left in that truth.
No blur. No drug-thick lag between seeing and knowing.
His body is on the floor in a shape that my mind keeps trying to reject even while the rest of me understands it instantly, primitively, the way an animal understands blood in the air.
He is twisted onto one side, one arm dragging weakly against the carpet, the wound in his side leaking dark into his shirt, his mouth open on breaths so thin they barely seem to belong to a living person at all.
Every second takes something from him. Color.
Strength. Time. The pauses between each breath are getting longer, and my body is counting them without asking me.
Too pale.
Too still.
Too quiet.
The Handler keeps me pinned beneath him with one hand in my hair, my face forced toward Silas like this is a lesson I am meant to memorize.
“Look at him,” he murmurs near my ear, his voice low, almost gentle in the vilest possible way.
“Pretty boy like that, all broken open because he couldn’t stop trying to play hero.
” His weight settles heavier across my back, calm as stone.
“That’s the problem with boys who fall in love with girls like you.
They start thinking devotion makes them dangerous. ”
A laugh drags out of him, dry and pleased with itself.
“Turns out it just makes them easy.”
The words go through me strangely.
Not cleanly. Not like a blow. Terror is still there, enormous and suffocating, ripping through me every time Silas’s chest barely rises.
Grief is there too, clawing against my ribs from the inside.
But beneath both of them, something else begins to move.
Something older than thought. Older than fear.
Something with no language in it at all.
No manners. No hesitation. Just the simple, brutal arithmetic of love meeting threat and deciding that one of them has to stop breathing.
His fingers slide through my hair.
“Such a waste,” he says, watching Silas on the floor as if he is looking over damaged furniture. “Built nice. Loyal. Mean enough to be interesting.” His hand trails lower over my shoulder possessively, “Could’ve had some use in him.”
Revulsion flashes through me so hot it nearly burns straight through the terror.
Silas drags in another breath.
It is wet...shallow...not enough.
“Please,” I whisper.
The Handler stills for half a heartbeat.
Not because he believes me.
Because he enjoys it.
That matters.
Everything in me is screaming to fight harder, to buck, claw, twist, force him to spend time controlling me. That has gotten me nothing. That has fed him. Bought him pleasure. Bought him a better view. Bought Silas less time with each second that passed.
So I let the resistance drain out of my body.
Not all of it. Never truly. Just enough to fake surrender.
Loosening my shoulders beneath him, my head turns slightly in his hand.
Letting my breath come ragged and uneven, I make myself go still the way prey goes still when it understands there is no point in wasting energy before the teeth sink in.
Men like him know the difference between terror and collapse because they spend their lives manufacturing both. He feels it immediately.
“There you are,” he says softly.
Nausea climbs hard into my throat, but I keep my body limp.
Silas makes another sound from the floor, a wrecked little gasp that shreds something in me all over again.
The Handler leans down closer, his mouth near my temple now.
“He can hear you, you know,” he murmurs. “Some part of him can. That’s the pretty thing about this. He’ll die listening to you beg.”
Rage flashes white behind my eyes so hard it almost blows the whole thing apart before I can get hold of it.
Not yet.
Not yet.
The tremor that goes through me gets read exactly the way I need it to. His hand glides down my back, slower now, triumphant.
"That’s right,” he says. “Let him watch you soften.” His breath warms my ear. “Maybe if you’re sweet, I’ll let him die looking at something pretty.”
On the floor, Silas’s fingers twitch against the carpet.
Alive.
Still here.
Still fighting.
One chance. That is all this is going to take. One opening. One stupid bit of confidence on his part. One second where he thinks he has won enough to get careless.
My face turns a fraction in his grip. Nothing obvious.
Nothing sharp enough to read as intention.
Just enough to bring the side of his throat into clearer view.
Just enough to catch the pulse there, thick and steady beneath skin that has grown soft with age and arrogance.
The line of it shows above his collar when he bends over me.
He is too pleased with himself to protect it.
“Good girl,” he murmurs.
His hand slides over my hip.
Every part of me revolts so violently it almost feels like I am trying to climb out of my own skin.
“Always knew you’d come around,” he says. “Girls like you always do. All that fighting, all that shaking, all that hate.” His fingers tighten. “Underneath it, same as your mother. Just needed the right hand on your neck.”
No.
Not fear now.
Not grief.
Something much colder.
Something so absolute it clears the room of everything else.
Hatred has a strange purity when it reaches a certain point.
It stops feeling wild. Stops feeling loud.
It becomes precise. Clean. Functional. The motel room sharpens around me under it.
The scrape of carpet against my cheek. The stale rot in the air.
The pressure of his body. The warm leak of blood from Silas’s side soaking into the floor.
The hideous pauses between Silas’s breaths.
The pulse in the Handler’s throat, beating there with smug, stupid confidence as if his body has never once had to imagine a world where it could be opened.
That is when I understand exactly what I am.
Not broken.
Not helpless.
Not the little girl who learned how to go still and wait for rooms like this to end.
I am the thing love turned feral...and I can feel my teeth.
He shifts above me, beginning to roll my body toward him with the careless confidence of a man who believes the room has already finished choosing his side.
That is the opening.
Not large. Not generous. Barely more than a breath in time... it's enough.
Snapping back my head hard, I drive forward with every last living thing in me.
My teeth sink into the side of his neck so deep the world disappears into flesh.
There is nothing hesitant about it. Nothing human enough to call a bite.
It is an attack in the oldest language my body knows.
Jaw locking down. Teeth punching through skin, through the corded line of muscle beneath it, through the arrogant pulse that had been beating there untouched because he never imagined I could become this.
He screams.
The sound rips through the motel room raw and animal, nothing composed left in it.
His whole body convulses above me, one hand slamming into the side of my face, another clawing at my shoulder, but I hold on.
I hold on with everything I have, grinding my teeth deeper, shaking my head once in a savage little wrench that tears the wound wider.
Blood bursts hot into my mouth, hot and metallic, flooding over my tongue in a rush so immediate it almost feels electric.
Salt. Iron. Living heat. The definite proof of him being breakable.
He howls again.
Then the word tears out of him, sprayed wetly over my hair through pain and shock.
“B-Bitch!”
Tangling his hand in my hair, he rips me backward, his flesh giving way under my teeth before I lose him. Something tears free. The taste of it is hideous.Triumph floods me so hard it nearly blacks out everything else.
Staggering away, one hand clamped over the side of his neck, blood pumps through his fingers in dark frantic bursts, too much to hide, too fast to control. For one blinding second the room changes shape around that sight.
He is not inevitable.
He is not untouchable.
He is not a god in this room.
He bleeds.
The knife flashes almost immediately, fury outrunning whatever precision he had left. The strike is wild compared to everything before it, driven by pain instead of calculation.
It finds my side anyway.
A white-hot detonation blooms low beneath my ribs, deep enough to steal sound before it gives it back.
The exact place he cut Silas. For one stunned heartbeat it feels unreal, a hard bright pressure without pain.
Then warmth spills, the wet, sick understanding of my body opening.
A wrecked sound breaks out of me, my knees hitting the carpet, the room shuddering sideways.
Still, he is the one coming apart.
One hand stays crushed to his ruined throat, trying to hold himself closed.
The other grips the knife, badly now, strength gone uneven in it.
Blood keeps spilling between his fingers no matter how hard he presses.
His face has gone gray under the rage, mouth opening as though he means to curse me, threaten me, finish what he started.
What comes out is a thick, bubbling choke.
Good.
A kick comes at me next, but there is nothing in it worth fearing. No balance. No control. Too much of him is occupied with not drowning in his own blood. Too much of him is leaking out.
That is enough.
Slamming my palms into the carpet, I lurch sideways, vision swimming red around the edges, pain breaking in jagged waves through my side.
No time to measure it. No time to understand how bad it is.
Silas is on the floor. Silas is fading. Silas does not have enough air in him to survive the luxury of panic.
My purse.
I need my purse.