Maëlys awoke to an empty bed, the lingering warmth beside her the only proof Eliott had ever been there. A faint, musky scent remained on her pillow, a ghost of the night's forbidden pleasure. Shame, sharp and biting, immediately seized her. What had she done? She had broken every single one of her rules, shattered the fragile boundaries she'd meticulously built around herself. And for what? A moment of raw, desperate passion with a man she barely knew, a man who felt dangerously familiar yet remained an enigma.
She swung her legs out of bed, her head pounding. The room, usually her sanctuary, now felt tainted by the memory of their entanglement. She needed to clean, to erase his presence, to scrub away the evidence of her weakness.
As she moved around her small apartment, a glint of dark metal on her bedside table caught her eye. It wasn't hers. A silver dog tag, simple and worn, lay half-hidden beneath the lamp. Her breath hitched. Eliott must have dropped it.
Curiosity, a dangerous serpent, coiled in her gut. Against her better judgment, she picked it up. The metal was cool against her skin, etched with what looked like military insignia and a name: ELIO... The rest was obscured by a deep scratch, but beneath it, a smaller, almost imperceptible inscription, faint but distinct. Maëlys squinted, bringing it closer to her eyes.
It was a date. XX/XX/XXXX. And below it, a single, etched initial. A 'L'.
Her blood ran cold. The date. It was eerily familiar, a whisper from the depths of her fractured memory. The same date her own life had shattered. The date of the accident. And the 'L'... a cold dread began to form in the pit of her stomach. Could it be? Was there someone else?
Her hands began to tremble. This wasn't just a dropped item; it was a connection. A piece of the puzzle she had desperately tried to ignore. She turned the dog tag over, her fingers tracing the worn edges. The cold metal suddenly felt like a branding iron against her skin.
Then, something else clicked. The subtle shifts in Eliott's demeanor, the way his stormy eyes held a hidden knowledge, his seemingly coincidental appearances, his uncanny ability to calm her nightmares. It wasn't intuition. It wasn't fate. It was knowledge. He had known about her. He had known about her past. And he had deliberately sought her out.
A wave of nausea washed over her. The sweet, dangerous passion of the night, the comforting embrace on the beach – it all twisted into something foul, something manipulative. He hadn't just been drawn to her; he had been hunting her.
Her gaze fell on the crumpled sheets, the indentations where their bodies had been pressed together. The memories of his lips on hers, the heat of his skin, the raw hunger in his eyes – they now felt like a violation. He had known. All this time, he had known the truth about her, about the accident, about the gaping hole in her memory. And he had used it. He had played on her vulnerability, on her desperation for solace, to get close to her.
A cold, unyielding fury began to build inside her, replacing the shame and terror. This wasn't romance. This was a lie. A calculated, insidious betrayal. The man she had just given herself to, the man who had tasted like forbidden salvation, was nothing but a shadow from her past, a dark architect of her present misery. He wasn't just a danger; he was the source of her deepest pain, wearing a disguise of comfort and desire.
Maëlys clutched the dog tag, its cold weight a stark reminder of the chill that now permeated her soul. Her rules had been shattered, yes, but not by passion. By deceit. And now, the hunt was on. But this time, she wouldn't be the prey.