Chapter 23 | Anna
Pain pounded through my head the moment I woke. Like there was a pickaxe buried in my skull. My eyes wouldn’t open. I was too busy trying to contain the massive pain. I winced. Once. A whimper. A sound I didn’t recognize.
I was still on the floor. Blanket over my legs. The room dark except for the faint glow from the kitchen. He hadn’t moved me.
Then a presence next to me. Warm. Solid.
I flung out a hand, reaching. Searching.
He caught my hand in his. Held it. His fingers wrapping around mine. Holding.
I opened my eyes. Looked up at him. He waited. His gaze fixed on my face. Those green-gold eyes held something I didn’t recognize. A wariness I hadn’t seen before.
And I realized with horror…
I did that. I put that there. I made him look at me like that.
He said nothing. I said nothing.
And though he held my hand, there was a gaping hole between us I didn’t know how to cross.
A flash of memory hit me then. When he tried checking my pulse and I launched myself at him. Because something inside me had triggered that response. That instinct to attack, to hurt. To destroy.
Oh, God.
I wanted to hurt him.
But, no, that wasn’t me. It was what was inside my head. It was how they rewired my brain.
How could he sit there and look at me? Holding my hand? Why hadn’t he left me here alone?
Because I managed to stop myself? Because I—
I thought of his hands. My gaze flicked from his face to his fingers encasing mine. Long. Slender. Scarred. Corded with muscle. Hands that held a sword or a gun or any manner of weapon. Hands that destroyed.
Or touched with reverence.
Those hands had never taken more than they had to. Now they held mine.
Emotion lodged hard in my throat as my breathing turned uneven.
My gaze traveled upward to his forearm wrapped in a bandage.
I’d done that, too. Cut him. And I hated myself for that.
Heat pounded the backs of my eyes. Burning. I blinked, trying to keep myself in check. To not break down. To be strong.
But my strength of will was waning.
I couldn’t—
My breath hitched.
He slid his other arm beneath my shoulders and gently lifted me up, pulling me to him. I buried my face in his chest. Clung to him like I was drowning and he was the only thing keeping me afloat.
I was.
He was.
We stayed like that for what seemed like an eternity. He let me use his shirt like a tissue. He never moved. He waited. He never clutched me to him with restraint. He held me. Allowed my emotions to run dry.
Then, quiet, “Do you want me to let go?”
His voice rumbled in his chest against my ear.
“No.”
One arm was still around my shoulders. I fumbled for his other hand. Searching. Reaching. Then—
He grasped my hand. Held it.
“I didn’t mean to,” I said.
“I know.”
I inhaled a breath—his scent—and closed my eyes. “They did something to me.”
He waited.
“Changed me,” I added. “You have to stop me. Next time.”
Again. Nothing. Like he was processing my words.
“Promise me,” I whispered. The same words I said in the cell before they took me. Before they tried to break me.
“I promise.”
He said nothing else. Didn’t add conditions. Didn’t ask questions.
That scared me more than reassurance would have.
I stared at the far wall, at a knot in the wood paneling that looked like an eye if you tilted your head to the right. Tried to breathe past the dull ache in my skull.
I didn’t know what would trigger me next time.
The first time, it had been how he moved at the window—too fast, too precise. My body had read threat where there was none.
The second time, it had been as simple as checking my pulse. Two fingers at my wrist. Care. Not force.
Both times, my brain had decided I was under attack.
Why?
How?
Because it was him?
Because that’s what they planted?
Because they’d turned me into a weapon meant for one specific target?
The thought made my stomach roll.
Sebastian’s voice surfaced then, uninvited. Smooth. Icy. Certain.
You’re a liability, he’d said, like he was commenting on the weather. But soon you’ll be an asset.
And more. He’d said more. More I was processing.
I closed my eyes.
They hadn’t wanted me trained.
They’d wanted me aimed.
The guard in the observation room had been a test. To see if the programming worked at all.
But Kincade—
Kincade was the target it had been designed for.
That’s why my body read threat in the way he moved. Why checking my pulse felt like an attack. They hadn’t taught me to fight.
They’d taught me to attack him.
If they could reach into my mind and tilt it enough to make my body move before I chose to, then what else could they reach?
It terrified me more than the pain in my head.
I’d always trusted myself. My instincts. My ability to read a room, read a threat, read the space between action and consequence. That trust was how I’d survived the Knights. How I’d survived Lucifer and Azriel. How I’d survived the things I’d done in the name of stopping more terrifying monsters.
Now that trust felt… fractured.
Not gone. Not destroyed.
But cracked.
I kept thinking about the pause. The moment before I’d gone still. Before awareness had come flooding back in and I’d realized whose throat I had my arm across. That fraction of a second where I could have finished it and didn’t.
That mattered.
It meant whatever they’d done to me wasn’t complete.
They’d sped up the decision. Shortened the space. Tried to erase the pause entirely.
But they hadn’t succeeded.
Because the pause still existed.
Because I still existed inside it.
And because Kincade didn’t fight me when it mattered. Didn’t counter. Didn’t force control back into my body. He’d let the moment break instead of escalating it.
That choice—his choice—had given mine time to surface.
Which meant this wasn’t about what they’d done to me.
It was about what I did next.
I couldn’t undo the wiring in my head. Not completely. But I could learn its shape. Its tells. The way it flared before taking over. I could name the moments when the world sharpened too fast, when my body mistook care for confinement and precision for threat.
I could learn to guard the pause.
That realization settled something in my chest.
Fear didn’t vanish, but it shifted.
Because being weaponized didn’t mean I was a weapon.
It meant someone had tried to make me one.
And failed.
I tightened my hand on Kincade’s, not in panic. Not in reflex. Enough to remind myself I was here. That I was choosing this moment.
Whatever they’d done to me, they hadn’t taken that.
“Sebastian—” I started, then stopped. His name was bitter on my tongue. I hated saying it. I hated even thinking it. “He said…”
I paused. Took a breath. Because once the words were released, there was no going back.
“He said I’d stop resisting once I understood who I was meant to hurt.”
His grip tightened around me a fraction. Enough for me to notice. Not enough for me to feel caged. Proof he was still here. Still holding me even after everything they’d tried to make me become.
In one sentence, I’d given Kincade all the ammunition he needed to end Sebastian Crane for good.
And I wasn’t sorry.