He just watched me, his chest rising and falling with the same ragged breathing I was trying so hard to steady.
I met his eyes.
“We’re enemies,” I reminded him.
His reply was quiet.Deadly.
“I know.”
The moment he was gone,I pressed both hands to my face and let out a strangled breath that felt like it was tearing out of my ribs.My mouth still tingled.My pulse wouldn’t settle.My body felt too warm, too aware, too… corrupted.
I kissed him.I kissed the man who murdered my parents.What kind of sickness was that?Why did I let weakness overcome me?
I dropped my hands and stared at the empty doorway like it betrayed me.God, I was losing my mind.My heart was beating so fast it was painful.My lips felt swollen.My throat tightened because I could still taste him—heat, breath, a softness that I knew someone like him was incapable of.
I shoved my fingers into my hair before I sank down onto the edge of the bed, breathing hard.This couldn’t be happening.For fifteen years, I’d imagined confronting him—the man with the storm-grey eyes, the man who pulled the trigger and didn’t flinch while my whole world died in front of him.I imagined stabbing him, shooting him, screaming at him, hating him.
But never in any lifetime did I imagine wanting him.
I stared at the floor, my hands shaking in my lap.I felt… hollow.Raw.Embarrassed.Ashamed.All of those things and so much more.
He’d changed.He was older.Bigger.Rougher.Meaner.More man than monster now, which somehow made him more dangerous.
And those eyes… God, those eyes.They used to be cold grey steel.Now they were silver—brighter, harder—but when he looked at me just now, I saw something else flicker under the surface.Something that shouldn’t exist between people like us.Something that terrified me more than death.
I pressed a palm to my chest as if I could slow my heartbeat down by force.
Why didn’t I fight him harder?Why did I let my guard down?Why did I feel… alive… when he kissed me?I gritted my teeth as answers to my own questions eluded me.
I’d spent years building myself into someone untouchable.A weapon.A survivor.A girl who vowed she’d never be weak again.I trained.I learned.I hardened myself into something strong enough to survive alone.And I didn’t understand what was happening now.Why I reacted like that.Why I couldn’t get his mouth out of my head.Why I was sitting here trembling like I was seven again instead of the killer I was forced to become.
“No,” I whispered fiercely.“Stop it.Stop.”
This was wrong.All of it.He was the enemy.Heshouldbe the enemy.He stole my family from me.He stole the girl I was supposed to become.He stole fifteen years of my life.And now he was stealing my breath.My logic.My focus.And the worst part?He didn’t even have to try.
I pressed my forehead against my knees, squeezing my eyes shut until they burned.
I should have hated him.Ididhate him.
But underneath that hate was something twisted, something broken, something alive—something I didn’t have a name for and didn’t want to examine too closely.
33
Neve
Iopened my eyes.
Atlas Cavalho was sitting in the chair across the room, elbows on his knees, watching me like I was a problem he couldn’t solve.His expression was unreadable—some mix of fascination, calculation, and a darkness that could only be attributed to predators.His hair was mussed from dragging his hands through it.His shirt hung open at the collar.He looked like he hadn’t moved in hours.
My stomach knotted.He had been watching me while I slept.The realisation unsettled me.My pulse jumped, and I hated that he saw it.
He stood slowly, like he didn’t want to startle me—but his size alone was enough to send a warning shooting through my veins.He approached the bed, stopped at the side, his gaze dragging over the bandages on my arms and the bruising at my throat.
“You were shaking,” he told me quietly.
I swallowed hard.I might have killed a man, but I had no delusions about how intimidating this man was.
“Why are you watching me?”