Chapter 33 Chapter 33

Chapter 33 Chapter 33
Bailey’s POV

The third time I tried to open my eyes, it finally worked. Third time’s a charm, right? My lids were swollen and heavy from last night’s endless sobbing. I’d never felt pain like that before — not the usual heartbreak kind, but something raw and physical that twisted through my chest. The question that kept looping in my head between the sobs was the same, ugly and impossible to ignore: why?

Why was I this devastated? I hated him — I was sure of that — and yet seeing him with Kara from inside his head had nearly torn me apart. Whatever the bond between us was, it had a way of making betrayal feel like a personal wound.

Running water snapped me out of my thoughts. I hauled myself upright and regretted it immediately. Every muscle ached like I’d been mauled. My clothes were a mess on the armchair by the bathroom. The couch held the rumpled pillows and sheets from where I’d passed out. My nightgown was still soaking. He’d slept here. He’d slept here after what he’d done.

I felt the blood rise in my face before I could stop it. Of course he’d be calm. Of course he’d be clean and ordinary while I was a wreck. The unfairness made my stomach flip.

I rounded the bed to grab a sweater and move to another room when the air changed. He was there — as if he’d materialized out of the woodwork. Half-naked, a towel around his hips, steam still clinging to the dark hair at his temples. He’d just come from the shower. The sight of him should have been everything I told myself it wasn’t: nothing. Instead my heart did that stupid, traitorous skip. He smirked when he saw my expression.

“You like what you see?” His eyes flashed coal-black — the color I was sick of and never wanted to see again.

“In your dreams, asshole.” I spat it without thinking, then bristled at how weak it sounded. I wanted to sound fierce, unbothered. I wanted to mean it.

“Your thoughts say otherwise… wife.” He said the last word like he’d swallowed something distasteful and spat it back at me.

He moved like lightning. One moment I was gathering my clothes, the next he was in front of me, fingers clamping my arms so hard pain flared. Up close the darkness in him pressed in like a physical thing, heavy and cold. My breath hitched; sweat prickled at my skin. The heart’s power hummed between us, taut as a wire.

“Get out of my head or I will make you get out,” I forced out, holding my chin up because I could not, would not, show him that he’d broken me.

He laughed softly, then with a fluid motion made himself disappear and reappear a stride away. He leaned in and — god — the memories crashed through me like a tidal wave: Kara’s moans, the heat and slickness and the way his hands had claimed her — all of it flooded back and stabbed the same place over and over. I couldn’t breathe. Anger bloomed into something darker; I tasted it — not just fury but an animal, knife-edge need to make him hurt.

I shoved. It was a raw, stupid response, all impulse and wound. The force of it — whatever tied us — slammed into him. He flew backward, the bedroom door exploding off its hinges like paper. He landed on the other side on all fours and rose immediately, towel still miraculously intact. A quick snap of his fingers and his clothes reappeared in the air around him — black shirt, black trousers, the exact uniform of cold control.

My knees gave out. My hands covered my mouth because I couldn’t keep from crying. Pain — his pain — echoed through me, warm and metallic against my own lips. When I wiped my mouth I touched blood. His blood. The connection was literal: when I hurt, he hurt. When I hurt him, I hurt.

He stood, brushing wood splinters from his shoulders as if the whole thing were an inconvenience. He looked at me with that smug, satisfied half-smile that made bile rise in my throat.

“Feeling better now, my dear?” he asked, voice casual as if we’d merely had a tiff.

Then, to someone just out of sight, he barked an order. “Take her to the dining hall. Find a way to fill her day and then do as we discussed before the ceremony. Understood?”

Benjamin’s voice — steady, not mocking — answered somewhere beside him. “Understood, Your Highness.”

He blew me a kiss, because of course he would. Then he vanished. The echo of his final words — “See you later, my dear…” — dragged like a cold chain through me.

I curled up on the floor and wept until my lungs shook. This was my life now: humiliation, pain, and that relentless knot of fear for the people I loved. If I made the wrong move, if I didn’t keep being what he wanted, he could reach through worlds and make them suffer.

When the tears finally slowed, exhaustion took me under like a tide. I slept with the knowledge that tomorrow would be more of the same — more control, more torment, more of him.