Chapter 26 - Kieran
I take a step closer to her, the heat of her breath brushing my chest as I box her in, one hand pressed to the wall beside her head. She’s trying to hide how fast her pulse is racing, but she’s trembling. Most wouldn’t notice it. Most wouldn’t hear the way her breath hitches when I close the space between us, wouldn’t see the faint shimmer of defiance in her eyes behind the panic.
But I do because I know her. Not the surface version—the sharp-tongued, wide-eyed Omega clinging to her pride. I know the way her spine stiffens when she’s trying to hold back fear. I know the way her gaze sharpens when she’s on the edge of fight or flight. And I know she’s only now realizing how much she doesn’t control.
“You want to go to Thisbe,” I murmur, my voice lower now, careful, curling between us. “But you want something from me.”
Her chin lifts, but the effort it takes her to look me in the eye doesn’t go unnoticed. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.” I let my fingers graze the bare skin of her throat—not touching, not claiming, just close enough to feel the tremor when she swallows. “You want something, and you know I’m the only one who can give it to you.”
Her brows pull together. “So this is a trade?”
“No,” I say, softer now, watching every flicker in her expression. “This is the part where you admit what you’re willing to give… for me to say yes.”
She looks away, jaw tightening, but I don’t move. I stay exactly where I am, body heat brushing hers, power wrapped like a leash around the silence.
“You dragged me into your bed without asking,” she snaps. “And now you want me to barter for freedom?”
I tilt my head, studying her the way I’d study an enemy before deciding how to break them. “You’re not locked in a cage, little red. You’re not shackled to the floor, gagged and blindfolded. If I wanted to imprison you again, you wouldn’t be standing.”
Her breath hitches again, but this time it’s not fear I catch in the scent. It’s something warmer. Thicker. She hates herself for it.
“I’m not trading sex for permission,” she bites out.
That earns a soft, rough laugh from me. “That’s not what I asked for.”
“Then what do you want?” she whispers, the fight in her thinning now, doubt creeping in at the edges of her fire.
I lean in, bringing my lips just beside her ear. “Tell me why you want to see the witch. Tell me what you’re hiding from me, and I’ll take you.”
Her body stiffens under my closeness, but her voice shakes when she speaks. “You wouldn’t believe me if I did.”
“Try me.”
She doesn’t. She goes quiet, eyes trained over my shoulder like she’s looking for an escape route that doesn’t exist.
I pull back enough to look her in the face again. “You’re not the first person who’s wanted to run from this place, Quinn. But you are the first I’ve considered letting.”
Her lips part slightly, confusion in her eyes. She hates not knowing the rules. Hates that I keep showing her that the rules don’t matter. Not when I decide what they are.
“You don’t even know me,” she says, and it almost sounds like an accusation.
I smile at that. “Don’t I?”
Her eyes flash with something I don’t expect—pain. Not the fresh kind, the old kind. The kind someone carries long after it should’ve gone. It makes her flinch like she’s been touched in the wrong place, like I cut her open without even lifting a blade.
I step back then, but only just. “What will you give me in return?” I ask again, this time softer, like I’m asking something intimate, not transactional.
She presses her lips together, then answers without blinking. “I’ll owe you.”
I smile again. “Dangerous words, Omega.”
“They’re all I’ve got.”
And for the first time since she got here, she’s not wrong.
I stare at her for a long second, letting her feel the weight of what she just promised. Not sex, obedience, or even loyalty. Just a blank debt owed to a man who carves enemies from friends and burns bridges before they can rot.
It’s stupid, but it’s honest. And for that, I nod. “Pack a bag,” I say. “We leave in the morning.”
She opens her mouth to respond, but I’m already walking away, leaving her pressed against the wall with the sheet still clutched around her and her heartbeat still outpacing reason.
Let her think she won this round, let her think I’m giving in. Because when I bring her to Thisbe, she’ll realize that the witch has no answers for her. That no one does.
She doesn’t know the real reason I’m agreeing; she doesn’t know that I saw it. The moment her scent hit the air the day she arrived, the bond cracked open like a wound I never asked for. And now, it’s bleeding faster.
She wants to break the bond? So did I, but that ship sailed the second I laid eyes on her.
She is mine, and this trip to the witch is not about freedom. It’s about watching her realize she never had any to begin with.
The moment she stepped into this world, she became its beating heart, and hearts don’t walk away.
They get kept; they get guarded. And when necessary…
They get caged.