Chapter 44
Amy
The campus changes before anyone says her name.
Something is wrong. I feel it the second I step out of class. Like the world outside the bubble Saint had me in last night burst, and reality set in. I’m Prey, and the soreness between my thighs tells me things between Saint and me will never be the same.
The courtyard is too crowded for the hour.
Students gather in clusters instead of moving toward the dining hall or the library or wherever people go when the day still belongs to them.
Phones are out. Voices are low. Security officers cut across the stone paths with radios pressed to their mouths, their expressions carefully blank, as if they know something and have been told not to say it.
Something is wrong.
I slow near the steps. Two girls from my psychology class stand beside the fountain, one crying into the sleeve of her sweater while the other keeps looking toward the dormitories.
“She wouldn’t just leave,” the crying girl says. “Not without her phone.”
My stomach tightens. “Who?” I ask before I can stop myself.
They both look at me.
The blond one swallows. “Monica.”
The name lands with a strange, sharp weight.
Monica. I can’t say that I’m a fan, for obvious reasons, but what happened to her?
“What happened?” I ask.
“They don’t know.” The girl wipes her face. “No one knows where she is. Her phone is in her room. It’s like someone took her or something from the way her room was destroyed. No one knows anything.”
The world tilts slightly. I step away from them, my bag strap digging into my shoulder. The courtyard feels too open suddenly. Too exposed. Every stone building seems to watch from above.
I start walking faster. Halfway across the courtyard, someone steps into my path.
“Shit,” I gasp. “Saint. You scared the shit out of me.”
He doesn’t appear so much as become noticeable, like he was always there and my mind only just allowed me to see him.
Dark hoodie. Black jeans. Hands in his pockets. His face unreadable. Except his eyes.
His eyes move over me once. Head to toe. Checking. Making sure I’m still whole.
“You’re coming with me,” he says.
I stop. “Excuse me?”
“Now.”
“No. Not until you tell me what you know. I heard about Monica.”
His jaw tightens. “This isn’t the time to argue.”
“That’s funny because I don’t remember giving you permission to decide where I go.”
Something flickers in his expression. It disappears quickly, but I see it. “Monica is gone,” he says.
“I just said I heard.”
“No.” His voice drops. “You heard what they think and don’t really know.”
A cold thread slips down my spine. “What does that mean?”
“It means campus security is looking for a missing student.” He leans closer, his gaze cutting briefly to the dorms before returning to mine. “I’m not taking any chances when it comes to you.”
The words hollow something out inside me. Before I can respond, another voice cuts between us. “Saint, she’s coming with me.”
Azriel.
He crosses the courtyard with controlled fury, his shoulders rigid beneath his coat, his eyes fixed on Saint.
Saint doesn’t move.
“No.”
Azriel stops a few feet away. “This is not up for debate.”
“And I said no.”
People pass around us, whispering, staring, pretending not to stare. None of them know they’re walking through a battlefield.
Azriel lowers his voice. “The Order was clear.”
Saint smiles, but there is nothing amused about it. “The Order can go fuck themselves and their rules.”
“They don’t want you near her.”
“They never wanted me breathing. I stopped caring.”
“This isn’t about you.”
Saint’s face goes still. “It became about me the second they put her name on a list.”
My pulse jumps.
That fact that they’re arguing about me scares me more than I want to admit.
Azriel’s jaw flexes. “You lose control around her.”
The words hit Saint somewhere deep. I can tell because for once, he doesn’t have a cruel answer ready.
Azriel steps closer. “That’s why they don’t want you near her. Not because you’re dangerous. We already knew that.” His eyes cut to me, then back to Saint. “Because she makes you worse.”
Saint’s voice comes out quiet. “No.”
Azriel doesn’t blink. “She makes you reckless.”
Saint takes one step forward. “She makes me precise.”
I don’t really know what’s happening. I still don’t know why Monica disappeared. But I know this. Azriel is afraid of what Saint will do. Saint is afraid of what will happen if he doesn’t.
Azriel looks at me. “I don’t like this,” he says.
“Then don’t agree to it,” Saint replies. “It’s like I’m giving you a choice. Amy stays with me.”
My throat tightens.
Saint’s gaze stays on me. “My house,” he says. “No one gets in unless I let them. You know you’re safe with me.”
My thoughts go immediately to what he did to Roman, but I push the now-deleted image from my phone away.
Azriel exhales sharply, like agreeing costs him something. “You keep her inside.”
“I wasn’t planning on letting her out.”
“I mean it, Saint.”
“So do I.”
Then Azriel looks at me again, and this time, his expression softens just enough to make the fear feel worse. “Go with him. He’s unhinged, but I know he will do anything to protect you.”
My fingers go numb around my bag strap. “I know.”
“No.” Azriel’s mouth tightens. “I’m not fighting him on it because of him. I’m doing it because I care about you, Amy.”
Azriel’s honesty has me sliding my hand into Saint’s outstretched hand. His fingers wrap around mine like a promise.
The courtyard blurs around me. The whispers. The security radios. Monica’s name floats through the air like something already dead.
During the light of day, Saint’s house sits behind a wall of pines at the far edge of the university grounds, tucked away where the road narrows and the trees grow thick enough to swallow sound. There are no cars in the drive like the night of the party.
Saint parks inside a garage that closes before I’ve even unbuckled my seat belt. The moment the door comes down, the outside world vanishes.
He doesn’t speak as he gets out and walks to a keypad hidden behind a panel. He presses a code as I get out and shut the door.
Inside, the house is silent. The kind of quiet made by thick walls, sealed windows, and someone who has planned for every way the world might try to get in.
I follow him through a narrow hall into the main room.
I notice what I didn’t the night of the party.
Dark floors. Low lighting. Heavy curtains drawn across every window.
Monitors mounted discreetly on one wall show different angles of the property—the drive, the trees, the back path, and the front gate.
“You live like this? With this much security?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
His eyes flick to mine. “Because locked doors are only useful if you know what’s on the other side of them.”
I don’t know what to say to that.
He moves through the house with frightening efficiency, locking things that already look locked, checking things that don’t look like they need checking. I count four cameras before I stop trying.
By the time he leads me upstairs, my nerves have begun to shift into something else as he stops in front of his bedroom door at the end of the hall. “You can use anything in here, and anything you need, you ask for.”
I hesitate before crossing the threshold. The room is not what I expect.
For someone everyone whispers like he’s the devil himself, I expect something cold. Black walls. Sharp furniture. A room made to intimidate. Instead, it’s warm in a way that almost hurts.
Charcoal walls. Dark oak floors. Shelves built into the far wall with books stacked in neat, uneven rows.
Heavy curtains cover the windows completely, thick enough to erase the outside world.
The bed is large, layered in dark gray blankets and pillows that look too soft for someone like him.
Nothing about the room asks to be admired.
“How do you sleep when you’re alone?” I ask.
“Honestly, naked.”
I stifle a grin before I walk farther into the room, my fingers brushing the edge of the dresser as if I need proof this place is real. Then I see the closet.
One door is open. Half of it belongs to him. Black. Gray. Dark green. Rows upon rows of hoodies, sweats, and sneakers. Boots lined beneath neatly hung jackets. Practical. Controlled. Severe.
The other half, I stop breathing.
Sweaters.
Jeans.
Leggings.
Oversized hoodies.
Soft sleep shirts.
Sneakers.
Even a pair of slippers tucked under the lowest shelf. Every piece still has a tag attached.
I step closer and touch the sleeve of a cream-colored sweater. It’s my size.
I turn back out of the closet. “Saint?”
He looks up from where he’s placing his keys on the dresser.
“What?”
I gesture toward the clothes, but my hand feels weak. “Whose are these?”
“Yours.”
The word is so simple. A strange pressure builds behind my ribs.
“You bought these before I came here.”
“I prepared the room.”
“But you didn’t know if I would ever agree to come here.”
“I knew you would.”
I turn to look at him. There is no arrogance in his face. Like my arrival was not a possibility he hoped for, but a fact he had already accepted and prepared for.
I back away from the closet and step into the bathroom.
Then I stop all over again. The shelves are full of things.
My face cleanser. The body wash I bought twice since arriving at Kenyan.
The same moisturizer I keep in my backpack because my dorm bathroom dries out my skin.
The exact lip balm in the front pocket of my bag. My toothbrush brand and toothpaste.
My throat closes when I open a vanity drawer. Hair ties. A brush, pads, tampons, and pain reliever. Even a heating pad still folded in its box.
Everything I might need and would have been too embarrassed to ask for.
I pick up the moisturizer with fingers that don’t feel like mine. “How did you know?”
Saint leans against the doorway. “I watched.”
I look at him. “You went through my stuff.”
He shrugs. “I don’t sleep much.”
The answer should horrify me. But another part—the smaller, weaker part I hate admitting exists—looks at the drawer and sees something I have never had before.
Consideration.
Not the pretty kind. This is darker. Meticulous.
“You planned all of this,” I whisper.
He frowns slightly. “No.”
I look back at him.
“I prepared.”
There is a difference to him, and I can see it with the way he looks at me when he says it. Planning sounds like fantasy. Preparation sounds like being chosen and waiting for my arrival.
I step out of the bathroom and look around his bedroom again.
The only feminine presence in this house was waiting for me.
The realization splits something open in my chest. No one has ever made space for me before.
I have spent my entire life trying to be smaller.
Easier. Quieter. Less trouble. Roman kept me caged in his space for his own enjoyment.
Saint made room for me before I asked—an equal space. My eyes burn.
His voice lowers. “Amy.”
I shake my head. “Don’t.”
He doesn’t move closer like he knows that would break me.
He stays where he is, hands at his sides, letting me have the room.
Letting me decide what to do with all this.
All this care that feels too close to obsession.
All this obsession that feels too close to care.
I sit on the edge of his bed because my legs don’t feel steady. The blankets are soft beneath my palms.
Saint watches me like I’m something he has waited years to see in this exact place.
“You really thought I’d come here someday,” I say.
His eyes hold mine. “No.” His voice is quiet. “I hoped.”