“You’re my stray now.” His hand slides into my hair, possessive. “And I’m never going to let you go.”
Something in my chest flips. I should push that. I should question it.
But I don’t.
Because the way he’s looking at me—like he sees everything I just said differently than I do—makes my version feel incomplete. Like I missed something really important all along.
My gaze drops slightly, my thoughts turning inward, replaying everything I just told him. The phone calls. The email. The silence after. The way I handled it. The way I explained it to myself. The way it had the butterfly effect, causing ripples outward that impacted my life in so many different ways, my core identity sitting at the root of it all.
My understanding of what this all meant felt solid before, a convincing narrative I’d built up in my head and put on replay without even realizing it.
But suddenly, it doesn’t anymore. It feels edited. Like I took something sharp and filed it down until I could live with it, or blunted my emotions to it through some kind of self-inflicted exposure therapy.
And now, I’m no longer sure what it actually looked like to begin with. Where the truth ended and the story I told myself took over.
That realization settles slowly.
Uncomfortable.
Unsteady.
And when I lean back into him, it happens without hesitation.
Without thought.
Like my body already knows where to go when everything else starts shifting.
And that feels more certain than anything else right now.
CHAPTER 42
SOREN
When she told me she was a child born of rape, my heart almost split in two.
Because to carry that specific burden, I understand it all too well.
It’s no wonder I’ve been so drawn to her—why we’re soulmates.
To carry that knowledge—that curse—that a monster’s blood, their DNA, runs through our veins. Something we can never outrun.
It doesn’t need to chase us. It’s just there, within us, from the day we are born until the day we die, and perhaps beyond.
I thought I was destined to carry that weight alone. It’s hardly something that people share.
It’s a burden.Weare burdens because of it.
We arebothpoison because of it. And I came up with that nickname without even knowing these specifics. I can sense it in her… because I can feel it within me.
My mentor used it. Painting a picture where I too was destined to become a monster. Using it to justify hispreconceived notions of the adult I’d evolve into, the lengths I would go to in order to carry out his darkest plans.
He took my deepest fears and made them real, showing me the monster I was—that I am—and encouraging me to embrace my darkness. Teaching me to use it.
Knowing this about Ivy makes me understand her more—what a complex, layered creature she is. No wonder her fantasies are so dark. We’ve barely scratched the surface.
Hell, adoption makes you feel like you don’t belong because you don’t look like your family or act quite like they do—but that’s the surface stuff.
Being the source of an act so vile makes you feel like you’re destined not to function in society. To be ostracized for something that happened before you ever existed.