Kiera's POV
I didn't sleep well that night.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw silver breaking against concrete.
I saw Alyssa's hand around my wrist.
Her smile.
The sharp little scatter of metal as the bracelet the charm hit the ground.
And then I saw Malakai.
The way he had looked at the bruise on my skin.
The way his jaw had gone still.
The way his voice had changed when he called me Mishka, low and careful, like he was trying not to let rage spill through the cracks.
The house was quiet now. Too quiet.
Bridget had eventually left my room after an unusual amount of staring and two completely unrelated questions that were definitely not unrelated. Mama Rose had sent dinner up, but I barely touched it. My wrist ached. My throat still felt tight from crying in front of him. And somewhere in the middle of all of it was a shame I couldn't quite name.
Not because I had hit Alyssa.
That part didn't shame me.
If anything, it still burned in me with a strange, ugly satisfaction.
No, what lingered was the look on Malakai's face when I tried to apologize for the bracelet. As if I had said something unforgivable by blaming myself for being hurt.
I was sitting on the edge of my bed in one of my sleep shirts, brushing my hair slowly, when there was a knock at the door.
Just once.
Quiet.
But I knew it was him.
Something in me always knew.
"Come in," I said softly.
The door opened.
Malakai stepped inside dressed all in black again, of course—black shirt, black trousers, sleeves rolled to his forearms. The hallway light framed him for a second before he shut the door behind him, and for that brief moment, he looked less like a man and more like the dark itself taking shape.
His gaze found me immediately.
Then dropped.
To my wrist.
The bruise had deepened.
I saw the flicker in his expression before he buried it.
"What are you doing up?" he asked.
I set the brush aside. "I could ask you the same thing."
His mouth shifted almost imperceptibly, not enough to become a smile. "You could."
He crossed the room slowly, and I noticed then that he was holding something small in one hand. A box.
Black.
Velvet.
My breath caught.
He stopped in front of me.
For a second, he just looked down at me, and the room seemed to pull inward around that silence. The curtains were half drawn, the bedside lamp throwing amber light over the sheets over his hands over the hard line of his jaw. Outside, the night pressed dark against the glass.
Then he held the box out.
"I got you something."
I stared at it.
My stomach tightened. "Malakai—"
"Take it."
His voice wasn't harsh.
Just final.
I reached for the box carefully, suddenly absurdly nervous, and opened it.
For a moment, I forgot how to breathe.
Inside lay a bracelet.
Unlike the first bracelet he'd given me—the one with the bullet charm and all the little pieces, this one had only two.
Two charms.
Except they weren't really two.
They were one heart, split down the middle.
One half was dark silver, covered in fine, deliberate cracks. Not shattered. Not ruined. Just… marked. Like it had survived things it was never meant to survive.
The other half was silver-white, bright beneath the light, but it wasn't perfect either. There were tiny imperfections etched into its surface, almost invisible unless you looked closely.
Both broken.
Just in different ways.
And yet, when they rested beside each other, the two halves fit perfectly.
It wasn't the kind of beauty that came from perfection.
It was the kind that came from finding something that understood your broken pieces.
My fingers brushed over the heart.
Dark and light.
Different scars.
Different stories.
Two people who should have been too different to ever belong together—and somehow, neither half looked complete without the other.
"Malakai…"
I looked up at him, but I didn't know what else to say.
He held my gaze for a moment before looking back at the bracelet.
"We're opposites, Kiera."
His voice was quiet.
"But that's not what makes us fit."
He touched the two halves with his thumb.
"We're both broken. Just differently."
My throat tightened.
"Somehow," he continued, "the pieces you can't carry anymore fit into the places I can't."
His eyes met mine again.
"And mine fit into yours."
He paused.
"Maybe we're not meant to fix each other."
His fingers closed gently around my wrist.
"Maybe we're just meant to remind each other that being broken doesn't mean being alone."
And that was when I realized—
The heart wasn't two halves because they were incomplete.
It was two halves because, somehow, they had found each other.
It was beautiful.
Painfully beautiful.
And so far beyond anything I had ever owned that it almost embarrassed me to touch it.
I looked up at him. "You didn't have to do this."
"I know."
That answer hit me harder than if he had argued.
I looked back down at the bracelet in my palm. "It's too much."
"No," he said quietly. "It isn't."
The room went still.
I swallowed. "The other one was fine."
His expression changed then.
Only slightly.
But enough.
"That bracelet broke in someone else's hand," he said, voice gone low and cold. "This one won't."
"I don't deserve this Malakai." I said touched and flustered.
I looked up sharply.
He held my gaze.
"I got it for you.," he said again. "You deserve more."
Something inside my chest twisted.
I lowered my eyes to the bracelet again admiring the details, then back to my bandaged wrist. "Can you...?"
He didn't make me finish.
He took the box gently from my lap, removed the bracelet, and set the velvet case aside. Then he sank down in front of me on one knee.
My breath stopped again.
"Malakai—"
"Be still."
There was something devastating about the picture of him there. A man like Malakai Blackwood on one knee in the dim light, head bowed over my bruised wrist, his large hands impossibly careful with me as he unfastened the light bandage and peeled it back enough to avoid hurting me.
The bruise looked uglier now.
Purple. Red. The shape of fingers.
His jaw hardened.
He didn't comment on it.
He just lifted my hand as if it were something breakable and slid the bracelet around my wrist with a care that made my heart ache.
The metal was cool against my skin.
His fingers brushed the inside of my wrist once while he fastened it.
A tiny touch.
Accidental, maybe.
It felt nothing like an accident.
When he was done, he didn't let go immediately.
His thumb moved once over the pulse point there, slow and thoughtful, and when I looked at him, his eyes were already on me.
"This is yours," he said.
I nodded, suddenly unable to speak.
"No one touches it."
The words were quiet.
But I heard everything inside them.
No one touches you.
No one marks what is under my roof.
No one takes and walks away smiling.
The air between us changed.
I could feel it.
"Malakai..." My voice came out smaller than I wanted. "Why are you doing this?"
He looked down at the bracelet again for a second, as if the answer might be hidden there. When he spoke, his voice was rougher than before.
"Because when you called me today, you sounded like you were trying not to fall apart." His gaze lifted back to mine. "And I hated it."
The honesty of it struck so hard I forgot how to defend myself.
I stared at him.
Still kneeling.
Still holding my wrist.
Still looking at me like my pain had become a personal insult to him.
My eyes burned.
I looked away before the tears could rise properly.
But he noticed anyway.
Of course he noticed.
His free hand came up slowly, fingers brushing under my chin, turning my face back toward him with infuriating gentleness.
"Don't," he murmured.
"I'm not crying."
"You are about three seconds away from it."
I let out a broken little laugh at that, and this time when my eyes watered, I couldn't stop it.
He rose to sit beside me on the bed.
The mattress dipped under his weight.
Then, without saying anything, he pulled me toward him.
I went.
Too easily.
Too quickly.
Like some part of me had already decided his chest was where I was safest.
His arm wrapped around my shoulders. My forehead rested against him. I could hear his heartbeat under the black fabric of his shirt—steady, low, real.
"I'm sorry," I whispered anyway.
"For what?"
"For being... this much. I brought my own fucked up world into yours and....i font know. I fell like im a nuisance sometimes "
He went completely still beside me.
Then I felt his hand slide up into my hair.
"You have no idea," he said softly, almost darkly, "how wrong that sentence is."
I closed my eyes.
The bracelet sat cool and solid around my wrist, lighter than the other. But stronger. Unbreakable, maybe. Or meant to feel that way.
After a while, I lifted my hand and looked at it in the low light.
The bullet charm glinted.
"It's beautiful," I said.
His mouth brushed the top of my hair. "Specially for you."
I turned my head slightly to look at him. "You really didn't have to replace it."
"Can you just stop talking for sometime Mishka?" He said with a low chuckle.
For a second, I couldn't speak.
There were so many things wrong with him.
So many things dangerous.
So many reasons I should have feared the weight of his attention.
And yet all I could think, sitting there in the dimness with his arm around me and his gift at my wrist, was that no one had ever looked at the things I lost and answered by trying to give me something stronger.
I leaned forward before I could second-guess myself and kissed him.
Softly.
Just once.
His hand tightened at the back of my head instantly.
When he kissed me back, it was slow, deep, not demanding—just enough to leave my heart unsteady and my thoughts ruined. When he pulled away, his forehead rested briefly against mine.
"You have no I dea what you do to me" he said, panting. I smiled and then pulled him in for a dangerous kiss without regarding the ache of my wrist.
He groaned into the kiss while I got up and took my place on his lap while gently pushing him back till he was lying down with me on top of him.
He was hard. Really hard. I could feel it even through our clothes. I wonder how big it is. I paused a bit, then looked him in his eyes. They were dark with lust and want.
I started grinding my core on his hardness, causing him to groan deeply . I bit my lip hard, trying not to make sounds.
I continued my movement on him, getting overwhelmed with a certain foreign feel of pleasure. Last time, I felt like this was about a month or two ago when he ate me out in the shower, and I came on his face.
I wanted to feel that pleasure again. I am, actually. My eyes closed with my lip in between. My lips, while I quicked my movement, then his strong, large hands held the sides of my waist, keeping me in place.
I opened my eyes and saw him looking at me as if he was fighting with himself to hold on to control.
"You have to stop now. I won't be able to control myself any longer, Mishka." He said ruggedly. It was as if he was just saying it because it was right. But I didn't think of that. I didn't want to. I wanted him. Right now.
"What if I don't want you to have control?" I asked huskly. And his eyes.....oh fuck.....his eyes. They held something I can't describe.
Possession,
Lust,
Want,
Self control,
And most importantly, affection.
In a blink of an eye, he switched our positions. I was now beneath him. My hands held above my hand with one of his. Not too tight to hurt my already bruised hand but enough to keep me in place.
"Mine." Was all he said in an animalistic voice I had never head. It was hot. Then he started. Did what he wanted and I let him. Because I wanted to.