Bella's POV:
I woke in the deep, silent hours of the night, caged securely within a pair of steady arms. My gaze drifted upward. Knox was asleep beside me, yet even in repose, a faint frown etched his brow. A fresh wave of heat, part fever and part frustration, washed over me. My fingers twisted into the fabric of his shirt.
My eyes fell to his lips—pale, beautifully shaped, and marked by a small, silvery scar at the corner. A reckless, dizzying impulse took hold. I held my breath and began to lean forward.
Suddenly, his eyes snapped open.
I flinched back, my heart lurching. His purple eyes glowed in the darkness, fully alert, holding none of the haze of sleep. A slow, knowing smirk carved its way across his lips, right where I had been looking.
"See something you like, little bunny?"
I blushed a deep, scorching red and twisted away, refusing to let him see the naked want on my face. His arms, impossibly strong, simply pulled me back against the solid wall of his chest as if I weighed nothing.
"Bunny," his voice was a deep, vibrating rumble in my ear. "There's something you're hiding from me."
I bit my lip, my mind racing and blank all at once. I was utterly disarmed, a novice in a game he had mastered. His finger traced a slow, shocking line over the bare skin of my neck. I shivered violently. He wasn't wearing his gloves.
He hooked a finger in the collar of my shirt and pulled the fabric aside, stretching it until my entire shoulder was bare to the cool air and his burning gaze.
Suddenly, his fingers froze. His breath hitched, a sharp, arrested sound in the dark.
"Bella." His voice had changed. The teasing warmth was gone, replaced by a tone so cold and hard it felt like a physical blow. It was the voice he used with enemies. "What is this?"
A cold dread, sharper than any fever, washed over me. The mark. The red, vine-like territory spreading across my skin. He had found it.
His grip on my shoulder tightened, not with pain, but with an intensity that was somehow more terrifying. It was the grip of a man who had just found a landmine in his own bed.
"What. Is. This."
The words were no longer a question but a demand, each one dropped like a shard of ice. He shifted, his body looming over me, caging me in. The playful glow in his purple eyes had been completely extinguished, replaced by a storm of disbelief and a dawning, furious recognition.
Before I could form a word, a broken, ragged sound tore from his throat. He released my shoulder as if my skin had burned him, his own hand flying to the exact same spot on his chest, over his heart, where his own scar lay.
His eyes, wide and horrified, snapped from my shoulder to my face.
"No," he breathed, the word full of a terror I had never thought him capable of feeling. "It can't be. Nightworth"
The name of the poison, the one he had created, hung in the air between us, a death sentence. The mark on my shoulder wasn't just a curse.
It was a signature. His signature. And in that moment, the predator wasn't looking at his prey. He was looking at his greatest failure, his most devastating victim. And I was looking at the man who had unknowingly doomed me long before we ever met.
The door clicked shut, the sound as final as a gunshot. I sat in the bed, the sheets tangled around me, my shoulder bare and the mark feeling like it was burning. The shock on my face slowly melted, replaced by a cold, sharp ache of hurt. He just… left. No explanation. No word. He saw the mark, spoke his own name like a curse, and abandoned me.
He left me alone. In this state. In the heat he promised to see me through.
A sob built in my throat, but I choked it down, clenching my fists. I didn't know when his presence had become my anchor. I didn't know when the beast's comfort had started to feel like a necessity. And in that moment of searing betrayal, I realized I didn't care anymore.
The need for him overrode the hurt, overrode the pride.
With a weak cry of frustration, I shoved the covers back. My legs trembled, barely supporting me, but I forced myself forward. I stumbled out of the room and down the dark hallway, my breath coming in ragged gasps. I wouldn't let him do this. He didn't get to unravel me and then just walk away.
I had to follow him.