Chapter 4 - Naia
I should have known this is how it would go. I’m trapped all over again, but rather than with restraints or on a stage, I’m stuck with someone self-righteous enough to assume he has all the answers.
The walls may be different, and my life isn’t being directly threatened, but it’s the same outcome.
Zane’s place is as plain as I expected it to be, but too stuffy for my liking. I never pictured him staying in an apartment, given how I was used to seeing him out in the woods, belonging there just like I did.
While the place certainly smells like him, there’s no sign of anything personal. There’s no soul either, like it’s merely an afterthought.
Strangely enough, it fits the version of him standing in front of me now.
I pace the length of the living room, back and forth, but the motion barely takes the edge off the storm raging inside me. My skin still prickles with the lingering effects of the suppressant, keeping my wolf restless beneath the surface and pressing against something it can’t break through.
I hate it, and I hate this.
Most of all, I hate him.
“You’re going to wear a hole in the floor,” Zane says from behind me, his voice calm in that infuriating way of his. I found it endearing once, but not anymore. Not after the auction, and being holed up in his apartment like something fragile.
I stop and slowly turn to face him. “I’d rather do that than sit here while you decide what to do with me. Or decide what’s good for me.”
His jaw clenches, but he doesn’t react with anger. Instead, he stays annoyingly still and impassive. “I’m not deciding what to do with you.”
“Really? Because it looks like you already have.”
His gaze hardens, yet he doesn’t move from the sofa. “You’re here because it’s the safest option. You need to recuperate and to think.”
“Safe,” I repeat with a disbelieving tone. “It doesn’t matter how many times you frame it like that; it won’t make me feel that way.”
“It should.”
“It doesn’t.”
The silence stretches, tight and coiled, but neither of us says a word. It’s somehow even more aggravating.
I can feel it building again…that pressure between us, the clash of two completely different worlds colliding in one place. It didn’t use to be that way, but now, it’s unavoidable.
“You don’t get it,” I snap, turning away again because looking at him makes it worse. “I don’t want safe.”
“No,” he mutters behind me. “You want to run straight back into the fire.”
“I want what I’ve earned, and what I know I’m capable of.”
The answer is immediate and absolute, leaving no room for debate. It doesn’t matter what he said about starting over when that’s where I belong. That’s where I have to belong.
“You don’t need them,” he says, far too easily and with more certainty than he deserves to use.
Everything in me reacts to that at once as anger flares hot and fast in my chest. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“I’m not deciding anything,” he fires back. “I’m pointing out the obvious, and what I know to be true.”
“The obvious?” I repeat, like the notion is ridiculous. “The ‘obvious’ is that my pack needs to see where I stand.”
“Given your status, they’ve already decided where you stand. Seldom do omegas ever climb the ranks,” Zane returns, not unkindly, but not gently either. “As I said, they don’t value you. Why go back?”
“Because I’ve worked hard. I trained, I followed orders, and I’ve been loyal to my family,” I snap back, feeling as the suppressant slowly loosens its grip on me, allowing more anger to rise to the surface. “They just need to be reminded of that, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
He just looks at me then, and his expression is caught somewhere between irritated and withdrawn. “That’s insane, and you know it.”
“What’s insane,” I shoot back, closing the distance between us, “is you thinking you know anything about what I’ve been through, or what I need to do.”
“I know enough.”
“No, you don’t,” I say, my voice low and deliberate now. “You left. You walked away. You don’t understand what it means to stay. To fight for what matters.”
“I understand loyalty,” he argues, unable to hide the way my insistence gets under his skin. “I also understand that brute forcing something doesn’t always make it work.”
“Running the moment something gets hard doesn’t either.”
For a second, something raw and unnamable flickers across his face before it disappears behind that controlled mask again, and it doesn’t help my temper.
“You saw an opportunity at that auction,” I continue. “A way to get leverage and information. Maybe even use me against my pack. But don’t pretend you did any of this to help me. I don’t believe it.”
His expression shifts just enough for me to catch. It’s not exactly guilt, but it isn’t anger either. It looks tighter somehow, like it’s preventing him from saying what he wants to, even if he’s trying.
“You really think that little of me?”
“What I think is a result of what you’ve shown me,” I return, unwilling to back down. “You fought against us in Coldreach. You built your life outside the pack system, and now suddenly you’re here, dropping millions to ‘save’ me? That doesn’t make any sense, Zane.”
The air between us feels like it’s about to ignite as more silence settles, and for a beat, I have no idea what direction the conversation will go in. I can’t predict what he might say, and it leaves a weird feeling in my chest.
“Believe whatever you want, but it won’t make you feel better, and it doesn’t change the situation.”
“And what situation is that?”
“That you’re not going anywhere,” Zane says, leaving no room for questions or arguments, regardless of how they’re already bubbling up inside me.
Before I can get a grip of myself, I snap, and the words come out low like a warning. “No. I’m leaving, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Not waiting for him to respond, I’m already moving toward the door with every instinct in me screaming to move and to act. To keep him or anyone else from controlling this.
Just as my fingers curl around the handle, he’s there, far too fast.
His hand slams against the door just above mine, blocking it before I can pull it open. The impact reverberates through the wood, solid and unyielding, and I freeze as my body reacts before my mind can catch up.
Without needing to see him, I feel just how close he is while his body heat permeates my skin, sending an annoying shiver down my spine. Then, I turn slowly, back pressing against the door as I look up at him.
Zane cages me in without touching me, one arm braced beside my head while the other is close enough that I can feel even more of his proximity. His presence is overwhelming yet steady in a dangerous kind of way, like he’s coiled and waiting for his chance to put me in my place again.
Even as my heart stutters, I don’t look away from him.
“Move,” I say, my voice steady despite the way my pulse has suddenly picked up.
“No.”
The response is quiet, yet unyielding. Neither of us is willing to concede in this, even if it’s only making things worse.
“I’m not asking.”
“I know.”
“Then get out of my way,” I utter, jaw tight while I just barely hold back from doing something incredibly stupid.
Zane’s brown eyes bore into mine, showing no signs of stopping. “Not happening.”
Each second this goes on, the harder it is to keep my rage in. It has only worsened since I saw his face again. “You don’t get to trap me here.”
“I’m not trapping you,” he says, leaning in enough that I have to tilt my head back to keep eye contact. “I’m stopping you from making a stupid decision.”
I hate that I notice the height difference between us now, and I hate how it heightens a new kind of awareness in me.
“I’m not your responsibility, so stop acting like I am,” I grit, trying to push against him despite how he’s more like a wall around me.
Clearly annoyed by all of this, Zane takes a slow, long-suffering breath. “I’m trying to keep you alive long enough for me to figure out what happens next, but you can’t seem to see decency when it’s right in your face.”
“You put us both in this position,” I fire back, letting the words spill out now, fueled by anger and something deep enough for me to push aside for now. “You walked into that place, made that choice, and now suddenly I’m the problem. I never asked for any of this.”
“I know you didn’t, and I never said you were a problem.”
“You didn’t have to,” I mutter as I shove at him again, but this time, he catches my wrist, and I hesitate.
The contact sends a jolt through me without warning, and my breath catches before I can stop it.
His grip isn’t rough, but it’s firm and deliberate, as if he has reached the end of his limit.
“Stop,” Zane says, his voice lower now and brimming with the control he can’t help but try to exude.
I glare at him, wishing it would burn enough to get him to drop it. “Let go.”
“Not until you calm down.”
“I am calm.”
His brow lifts slightly, like he’s skeptical. “Could’ve fooled me.”
“Maybe I’d be calmer if you let go and stepped back,” I tell him, anger surging in inconsistent waves as it tangles with something else now…Something I don’t like, don’t understand, and don’t want.
That awareness of him and of how close he is eats away at me, trying to weaken my defenses. Without my permission, my body reacts despite everything screaming at me to pull away and to make sure he never has the chance to get this close again.
I hate it.
“I’m not staying here,” I say, forcing the words out through clenched teeth and trying to convince myself it’s an inevitable truth, like speaking it into existence.
“For now, you are.”
My heart pounds harder and faster. Rather than fear, something much worse threatens my resolve. It takes every ounce of strength I have to not fold under the pressure and to keep my mind from tricking me into assuming any part of the old Zane still exists.
“Why do you even care?” I demand, not caring how loud I ask.
For a second, his expression shifts into something painfully real, and for all of his stoicism, even he can’t hide it.
“I told you,” he says quietly. “I wanted to help, and this is me helping, like it or not.”
I search his face, looking for the lie, for the angle, or the strategy, but all I see is that same steady certainty wrapped up in the complete faith he has in himself. That confidence unsettles me more than anything else.
“That’s not enough,” I mumble, struggling to keep up the fight despite needing to.
“It is for me.”
More heavy, complicated silence lingers, and I swallow hard to force myself into focusing on what matters, not on the heat moving through his palm and into my skin.
His grip loosens slightly, like he’s trying to be careful with me, but he doesn’t let go.
Something uncomfortable wavers inside me. “I don’t need saving, Zane.”
His gaze drops briefly to where his hand still holds my wrist before lifting back to mine. “Maybe not, but you needed out. Don’t throw the chance away while you have it just because obedience feels familiar.”
As I stare up at him, I realize something I don’t like.
He believes that with absolute certainty, and I don’t know what to do with that.
Because a small, buried part of me can’t help but wonder if he’s right.
The rest of me, however—that’s been shaped and hardened by years of loyalty, duty, and expectation—that part refuses to accept it. After everything, I can’t let it.
“I’m still leaving,” I say, even if the words don’t feel as solid as they did before. “One way or another.”
His expression doesn’t change, like he’s unbothered despite the fight he just put up. “Not tonight.”
The finality in his voice sends a fresh wave of anger through me, but beneath it, something in me fractures a bit more, and I don’t know whether to fight it or run from it.