22. Anya
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
ANYA
The constant hum of an engine pulled me through the fog of sleep, insistent, wrong. For a moment I thought the sound was the air conditioner rattling against the window, but it pushed at the contours of my consciousness like a bruise, hard enough to rouse me.
I blinked, slow and heavy, the world swimming into focus. A warm body lay beneath me. An arm, heavy as iron, curled around my waist. I tried to shift away but my limbs refused—sluggish, foreign, like they belonged to someone else.
My breathing picked up first. Then the terror came, dragging its nails up through my chest before my mind could even catch up.
I shoved against the body, fists tight, and scrambled backward until I hit the headboard. The room tilted and spun, the walls smearing into streaks of shadow and lamplight.
A face swam into focus. The face I loved. The face I hated myself for loving.
“Thorne?” I whispered, defaulting to the name he’d given me when we first met. My voice came out cracked, barely a whisper. “What’s happening?”
My mouth was sandpaper-dry. My body wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t cooperate, as I kept scooting backward, putting distance between us that felt both essential and impossible. He blurred and doubled in my vision, refusing to hold still.
“Go back to sleep, my angel.” His voice reached me, threaded through with something almost tender. I fought to keep my eyes open.
I lost.
The next time I surfaced, it was to Dozer’s whining and the low growl of a motor.
I glanced down and found him sitting curled up next to me.
Then I felt the weight of a jacket draped over me.
His scent surrounded me, cedar and smoke and another layer I’d never been able to name, something that used to mean safe before it meant danger.
I lifted my head.
Thorne sat beside me in the back seat, close enough that our knees touched. His gaze was already on me, burning, and I couldn’t tell if the shiver that ran through me was fear or the traitorous ghost of longing. Maybe both. Maybe that was the worst part.
I pushed myself upright, and he extended his hands to help.
“Don’t.” I knocked them off my shoulders, harder than necessary.
The driver’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, and I recognized her instantly. She had the same sharp cheekbones, the same storm-colored eyes as her twin. Elira. Thorne’s sister, behind the wheel, driving me wherever this nightmare was taking me.
She’d helped him do this. Helped him take me.
The realization landed like a stone in my stomach. My brother would burn the world down for this. My father would call it an act of war and mean it. Did they understand what they’d started, the two of them, sitting there so calm?
The silence in the car was suffocating, thick enough to choke on. My whole body ached. My head, my wrists, some bone-deep exhaustion. I let my eyes move over them, searching for a flicker of doubt.
There was none. Not in Thorne’s eyes, not in Elira’s.
“What have you done?” My voice shook despite everything I did to steady it. “Take me back. Right now.”
Thorne’s grin was wolfish, edged with something dark enough to draw blood.
“You’re my wife, Anya.” His voice dropped, simmering with unspoken threat. His eyes dragged over me like he owned every inch. “And our marriage was for life.”
God help me, I drowned in his eyes anyway. Let them pull me under, the way I always had, the way I swore I never would again.
Hate him, Anya. Hate him! Remember the lies. Remember Gabriel, still blind because of what this man did.
It was the only weapon I had left against him and yet my heart—stupid and traitorous—wouldn’t hold it. It refused to hate him even now.
The car slowed, then stopped. I startled at the stillness, reaching for the door handle before my mind could catch up with my body, and I threw myself out into the night air.
“We’re on an island in the middle of the Caribbean Sea.” Jetmir’s voice was nonchalant, and he didn’t even bother to run after me.
A salty wind hit my face. Beyond the gravel drive, black water stretched out in every direction, glittering faintly under a sliver of moon, swallowing the horizon whole. No lights. No roads. No signs of another living soul.
I understood what he meant as my body collapsed, adrenaline leaving my body weak.
There was nowhere to run.