Chapter 14 I Knew He Will Come For Me
Brea's POV
I turned the drive over in my hands. Three days of slaps and strikes for postures I couldn't get right, speeches repeated until my voice gave out, and Adrian's threats delivered like they cost him nothing.
They thought that was all I had been doing. What they didn't know was that pain was nothing new to me.
I had spent my whole life trying to be useful in a world that didn't think girls should bother. I grew up in an electronics repair stall.
I learned to hack systems quietly before I was twelve. My father called it a waste of time...last night I proved him wrong when I slipped into the administrative office.
I sat down at their own terminal and walked straight through their network like I owned it.
Looking down at the drive. Before I left I had planted a message inside their system neat enough to look real, specific enough to turn them against each other.
By the time they found it they would be too busy hunting a traitor that didn't exist to notice one human girl had walked out with everything they were hiding.
They wanted a weapon. They got one. Just not the kind they planned for.
Today was my last day here. The engagement ceremony was tomorrow and the Enclave knew better than to keep the prince's future bride locked in their walls the night before the whole court was watching.
Rayne's POV
Days passed and my unease only grew. Adrian Calista still had not returned Brea.
At first I told myself it was political restraint because the Enclave operated under its own rules and interfering too soon would create unnecessary friction between our factions.
But the days kept passing and even the court had started noticing my restlessness in ways I couldn't afford to ignore.
When the session ended and the nobles began dispersing I rose and gathered the documents from the council table.
My mother stepped into my path before I reached the door, her expression the kind that didn't need volume behind it.
"I don't know what has come over you Rayne but if you don't get yourself together you will lose your place in this court," she said.
"You are my heir. Watching you behave like a lovesick fool over a human girl is pathetic." She walked away without waiting for my response.
Her words landed harder than I wanted them to. But she wasn't entirely wrong and I had waited long enough.
I turned to the guards. "Prepare the convoy. We're going to the Enclave."
The room went still. "My prince, are you certain?" the butler asked carefully.
I looked at him with glowing eyes and the question died immediately. He bowed his head.
"My apologies, my prince. The convoy will be ready in fifteen minutes."
Butler James had the door of the lead vehicle open by the time I reached the entrance and I stepped in without breaking stride.
We pulled away moments later toward the one place vampires rarely visited without an invitation.
The Human Enclave looked nothing like I had imagined. It had glass and reinforced steel rising several floors above the street with security cameras covering every angle of the entrance and harsh white lighting that left nowhere to hide.
It was well built, precisely built, which shouldn't have surprised me given that humans had constructed half the great vampire estates across the eastern territories.
They had always been the better builders even if we rarely said so. What did surprise me was the low steady pressure radiating from the building itself, a suppressive field that pushed against my senses the moment we pulled up, dulling them just enough to remind me that I was on their ground now and they had prepared for visitors like me.
The convoy stopped at the entrance and before I had fully stepped out.
I looked up and found Adrian already on the balcony above us, watching our arrival like he had known we were coming long before we crossed their perimeter.
Something about him sat wrong with me.
He looked human but something beneath that composed exterior felt off and I told myself it was the suppressive field affecting my perception.
He came down to meet me personally, hands folded, expression polished and precise.
"Prince Rayne." He greeted me with a measured nod. "I had a feeling you would come personally. Most would have sent an envoy."
"I don't send envoys for things that matter," I said. "Where is she?"
"Of course." His smile didn't move. "Brea performed exceptionally well during her training.
I must commend your judgment in allowing her to participate in our program." Each word was placed with the care of someone watching a plan reach its intended conclusion.
It sent a chill down my spine that I kept off my face. I gestured for my guards to wait and followed Adrian inside.
The interior was as the exterior, polished floors, perfectly ordered hallways, not a single detail out of place.
The kind of environment that didn't happen by accident. Adrian led me into the central hall and that was where I saw her.
Brea stood in the center of the room with her shoulders straight and her chin slightly lifted.
Her eyes moving across the space with a sharpness that stopped me mid-step. She was not trembling.
She was not frightened. She was not anything I had been expecting to find.
She turned and looked directly at me and the gaze that met mine was steady and gave nothing away. Not relief, not fear, not anything I could use to measure where she was.
"Brea," I said.
"My lord." A small precise nod, nothing more.
Adrian stood to the side and the quiet satisfaction on his face told me he had been waiting for exactly this moment since I walked through the door.
"Did they harm you?" I asked.
"No," she said simply.
I looked at her. At the faint shadow under her eyes, the way she held herself like someone who had learned that standing straight was the only armour available to her,l.
She was lying and she knew that I knew it and she had said it anyway, deliberately, without flinching, which told me she had decided what she was going to say long before I walked through that door.
She was protecting something. I didn't know what yet.
I kept my expression level. "We are returning to the palace."
She studied me for a moment and then nodded, no hesitation and no glance toward Adrian for permission, and something about that steadiness was harder to read than deference would have been.
Adrian clasped his hands. "She is ready."
We moved toward the exit and I watched her without making it obvious.
Her steps were measured and her eyes moved across every corridor we passed.
The quiet efficiency of someone who had learned to treat every unfamiliar space as something to be understood before it could be used against her.
The Enclave had not simply trained her. They had rebuilt the way she moved through a room entirely and I wasn't sure yet what that meant for me.
We reached the courtyard and I slowed slightly.
"You understand the consequences of disobedience," I said. "You are still under my command."
Her eyes moved to me briefly. "I know," she said, and left it exactly there, no elaboration, no reassurance, just two words sitting in the air between us.
That could have meant anything and probably meant something specific that she had no intention of sharing.
Adrian stopped at the gates with his hands clasped and that same measured smile.
"You may take her," he said. The ease of it bothered me more than resistance would have. He had never intended to keep her.
He had been building something and now he was handing it to me deliberately, like a man who already knew exactly what it would do when it walked through my doors
I looked at him for a long moment and kept my voice completely even.
"You held her beyond the agreed terms," I said.
"When the engagement is concluded we will have a conversation about what that decision cost you." I held his gaze just long enough to make sure he understood I wasn't making a suggestion.
"Do not make me come back here again."
Something shifted behind his eyes. His smile didn't move but it didn't need to.
I turned and walked to the convoy.
She settled into her seat with the same composure she had carried through every corridor of that building. I had sent a frightened girl into that place. The person sitting across from me now was something else entirely.
By the time the palace gates appeared ahead I had reached one conclusion. Whatever the Enclave had made her into, I needed to understand it.