Kiera's POV
When I opened my eyes, the room was still blue with early morning shadow.
For one long second, I forgot where I was.
Then I felt the warmth beside me.
I turned my head slowly.
Malakai was asleep.
Really asleep.
Not the guarded stillness he wore even in silence. Not that dangerous half-rest he seemed built for. This was different. Heavy. Deep. Human. His face was turned slightly toward me, dark lashes resting against his skin, his mouth softened by sleep, one arm sprawled across the sheets like sometime in the night he had stopped remembering to be made of steel.
The digital clock on the nightstand read 6:43.
School.
The word dropped into my chest like a stone.
My stomach tightened immediately. School had resumed, and I still didn't know how to exist inside it and this house at the same time. I didn't know how to sit through classes after nights like this. I didn't know how to carry Malakai's darkness on my skin and still pretend to be just another girl with homework and deadlines and first period.
But I had to go.
Carefully, I slid out of bed.
He didn't move.
I stood there a second, watching him, my heart doing that strange, painful thing it had started doing around him lately. He looked peaceful in a way that almost didn't suit him. Too beautiful. Too still. Like violence had finally loosened its grip on him for a few hours and left behind the man underneath.
That was somehow worse.
Because I liked seeing him like that.
Too much.
I gathered my clothes as quietly as I could and slipped into the bathroom. Showered, brushed my teeth, fixed my hair with trembling fingers, and dressed in a striped top and fitted jeans. I packed my books, my charger, my notebook, trying not to make a sound. Every little thing suddenly seemed loud—the zipper of my bag, the scrape of a drawer, the click of my compact closing.
When I stepped back into the room, he was still asleep.
The curtains were still drawn, letting in only thin silver seams of light. He hadn't moved an inch. One side of the blanket had slipped low, exposing ink and muscle and the slow rise and fall of his chest.
I should have left.
Instead, I walked back to the bed.
I leaned down and pressed the softest kiss to his forehead.
Just once.
A secret.
A goodbye I didn't want anyone else to catch.
Then I grabbed my bag and slipped out of the room before Bridget could come banging in half-awake and foul-mouthed and find her brother in my bed.
The hallway was cold against my skin.
A minute later, Bridget's door opened and she stumbled out looking like death in expensive school uniform. Her hair was brushed, her face was washed, but her expression said she would rather be hit by traffic than attend class.
She barely looked at me.
"Morning," I said.
She grunted like I had offended her by existing and kept walking.
At breakfast she was worse.
She dragged herself into a chair, stared at her food like it had personally betrayed her, and muttered, "If I ever find the asshole who invented school, I will shoot them right between the fucking eyes."
Classic Bridget.
I almost smiled into my juice.
The drive was quiet at first, the sky outside washed pale and lifeless, the city still yawning awake. Then, halfway to her school, Bridget found enough energy to keep complaining.
"Why do I need education?" she demanded from the backseat, throwing herself dramatically against the leather. "I'm rich. My brother is terrifying. Society already gave me enough tools."
I laughed softly. "You say that every week."
"And every week I mean it."
David, the driver, kept his face politely blank, but I saw the corner of his mouth twitch in the mirror.
We dropped Bridget off first.
She climbed out still muttering curses at academia and slammed the car door behind her. Then David drove me the rest of the way to my school, just like we'd arranged. A few blocks down. Far enough that no one would see the exact car.
He pulled over by the curb.
I reached for the handle, then paused. "Thanks, David."
He nodded once. "Have a nice day Kiera."
I stepped out, adjusted my bag on my shoulder, and waved lightly as he pulled away.
The car barely made it half a block before the feeling hit me.
That old feeling.
Like somebody had just laid a knife between my shoulder blades.
I turned.
Alyssa.
She was standing near the entrance path in her skimpy clothes, staring not at me at first—but at the direction the car had gone. Then her eyes came back to me, slow and gleaming, and a wicked little smile spread over her mouth.
Shit.
She started walking toward me with that poisonous grace she had always had, like cruelty was stitched into her bones.
"Hello, sister," she said.
The word dripped venom.
I straightened. "Alyssa."
"I never knew you were that desperate for attention." Her gaze flicked down my clothes, my bag, my face, every detail. "Crawling your way into your collector's bed just to get a few privileges."
For a second, I didn't even process the words.
I just stared at her.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
She laughed softly. "Oh, don't deny it. You think I don't see things?" She stepped closer. Too close. "The clothes. Now the car. The way you suddenly look like somebody's taking care of you." Her smile sharpened. "He must be giving you something in return."
My throat went tight.
"Move."
But she kept going, enjoying it now.
"Tell me," she murmured. "How many rounds did it take? Or was he easy to please?"
I tried to walk past her.
That was when she grabbed my wrist.
Hard.
Right where the bracelet sat.
Pain shot through my hand so fast it made my eyes sting.
"Stop it," I snapped, yanking back.
But Alyssa's eyes had landed on the bracelet.
She held my hand tighter, turning it like she was inspecting something bought in a store.
"Oh," she said. "It's pretty. I've noticed it dor a while now"
My heart started pounding.
Then her smile changed.
"Did he give you this too?"
And before I could stop her, before I could even understand what she was doing, she tore it off my wrist.
The chain snapped.
The charms—the bullet—hit the ground.
Then the rest scattered.
For one suspended second, I heard everything.
The tiny metallic skitter of broken pieces on pavement.
Students talking in the distance.
A bird startled from somewhere near the gates.
My own breathing.
Alyssa laughed.
And I didn't know what I felt first.
Not sadness.
Not exactly.
Not even pain.
It was something hotter than that. Something older. A kind of rage that had been sitting in me for years with its eyes closed, waiting.
I dropped to my knees automatically, trying to gather the pieces with shaking fingers. My breath had gone thin. Sharp. Wrong.
If Malakai saw this—
No.
It wasn't even that.
It was mine.
That bracelet had been mine.
Something precious. Something chosen. Something that had meant more to me than a stupid piece of silver had any right to mean.
And she had broken it.
Like she had broken everything else.
I looked up.
Alyssa was already walking away, still laughing, slipping back toward the school entrance like she hadn't just ripped something open inside me.
And something snapped.
Cleanly.
Completely.
I shoved the broken pieces into my bag and stood so fast my vision blurred. Then I walked after her, not caring who saw, not caring who whispered, not caring that a crowd was already beginning to form in the hallway.
She was with her friends by the lockers when I reached her.
She had just enough time to turn.
Then I grabbed a fistful of her hair and slammed her face into the locker.
SLAM
The sound cracked through the hallway.
Gasps exploded around us.
Alyssa screamed.
"Do you think this is funny?" I hissed, dragging her back and smashing her forward again.
SLAM
"How many years has it been, Alyssa?"
Her friends froze.
Nobody moved.
Nobody helped.
And that made me more vicious.
"Fourteen years," I spat. "Fourteen years you treated me like dirt in my own father's house."
I slammed her again.
CRACK.....
Blood appeared at her nose.
Students backed away.
"You and that whore of a mother made everybody think I was a freak."
SLAM
"You made me feel like an outcast in a place that was mine before you ever arrived."
SLAM
"You turned my own father against me." My voice broke into something colder, more terrible. "And then you stood there while they gave me away like I was nothing."
I shoved her hard. She stumbled, crying now, blood on her mouth, on her forehead, on the locker door.
But I wasn't done.
"Now you destroy something I actually cherished?" I grabbed her again. "You think I'm going to take that lightly?"
I hit her once more.
Hard enough that even I felt it in my arm.
Then I let her drop.
She landed badly against the lockers and slid halfway down, face wet, nose bleeding, fear wide and ugly in her eyes.
Fear.
I had never seen that look on her before.
And God help me, it fed something dark inside me.
I crouched in front of her and grabbed her chin.
She flinched.
Good.
"How does it feel?" I asked, my voice terrifyingly calm now. "How does it feel being humiliated in front of everybody?" I leaned closer. "How does it feel bleeding while people stand around and stare?"
She was shaking.
Crying.
I spit in her face.
Then I said, low enough that only she could really hear it, "If you ever come near me again—if you ever touch me, or damage anything I own, or anything I cherish—I will do something to you so unforgivable that every time you look in the mirror, you'll remember this was the day you should have stopped."
I let go of her.
Stood up.
And walked away.
Behind me, chaos broke loose.
People shouting.
Someone yelling for a teacher.
Alyssa sobbing.
Her friends finally rushing toward her now that the danger had passed.
I didn't care.
I couldn't.
My whole body felt wrong. Electrified. Hollowed out. Like something had ripped out of me and left behind smoke.
I walked straight past the classrooms, past the staring students, past the office doors, all the way to the bleachers near the field.
The morning air hit me cold and hard.
I sat down and stared at nothing.
My hands were shaking.
Not with fear.
Not anymore.
I looked down at my wrist—the red marks where she'd grabbed me, already darkening, the absence of the bracelet like a missing pulse.
Then I opened my bag and looked at the broken pieces inside.
My throat closed.
I couldn't go back in there.
Not today.
Not this week.
Maybe not ever.
So I reached into my pocket, pulled out my phone, and scrolled to the contact that still did something strange to my chest every time I saw it.
I pressed call.
He answered after two rings, his voice deep and rough with sleep.
"Hey." A pause. "When did you leave?"
Hearing him nearly undid me.
I stared out at the empty field and swallowed. "Can you come pick me up?"
I heard movement immediately. Sheets. A mattress. The shift in his breathing as sleep left him all at once.
"Where are you?"
"At school."
His voice sharpened. "What happened?"
I closed my eyes.
Too much.
Everything.
Nothing I could explain over a phone.
"I'll tell you when you get here."
Silence.
Then: "I'll be there in fifteen."
"Okay."
Another beat.
"Kiera."
I gripped the phone tighter.
"Yes?"
"Do I need to bring my gun?"
He asked while I was just dazed and in pain.
"No. Please just come get me."
"OK. Just stay there and gather whatever you need."
The quiet command in his voice steadied something in me.
"Okay," I whispered.
Then the call ended.
I lowered the phone slowly and sat there on the bleachers with my bag beside me and my pulse still punching through my veins, the field stretched empty in front of me, the school in uproar behind me.
And for the first time in my life, after all the years of swallowing it, surviving it, enduring it—
I didn't feel weak.
I felt dangerous.