Chapter 21 Chapter twenty-one
~Sylvia~
The door clicked shut behind me, and the sound echoed like a hammer blow inside my skull. I didn’t even realize how hard I slammed it until the frame rattled. My pulse was still hammering in my ears, loud enough to drown out the world.
Then I moved.
My fist met the wall before I even knew I’d swung. A dull thud shot up my arm, and pain bloomed through my knuckles, bright and sharp. I didn’t care. I wanted to feel something that wasn’t the image burned behind my eyelids. My brother’s hand on her waist, fingers splayed with ownership, his mouth too close to hers.
Ellie.
God, I could still see her flinch a little when he touched her, the way her eyes darted to me for just a second, then away as if she was ashamed, or maybe scared. I didn’t know which was worse.
Another punch. This time the plaster cracked. White dust puffed into the air, floating like smoke.
“She’s mine,” I muttered.
The words came out hoarse, like something scraped from my throat. I didn’t even mean to say them. They just… slipped out, over and over.
“She’s mine.”
The rhythm matched the sound of my fist hitting the wall. My skin split open. Blood smeared across the white paint, streaks of red marking every blow like proof that I still existed, that I still felt.
I didn’t even notice the mess I was making until the lamp on my desk went flying. My elbow caught it when I turned, rage making me clumsy. It hit the floor, shattered, and the bulb popped with a small flash. Darkness swallowed half the room.
I stood there panting, my hand trembling, blood dripping onto the floor. I could hear the drip like a alarm clock beeping
My chest hurt. Not just from the exertion, but from something deeper something that felt like betrayal, humiliation, grief, and rage all tangled into a single raw nerve.
I pressed my forehead against the wall. The cool surface grounded me for half a second. My breathing slowed, but the image still wouldn’t leave. His hand around her waist. Her body leaning slightly toward him. The soft, breathless sound of her laughter.
“She’s mine,” I whispered again, quieter this time. But it didn’t feel like a declaration anymore. It sounded pathetic. Empty.
“Are you planning to bring the whole house down, or just that wall?”
Simon’s voice.
I didn’t answer.
He looked around the room, taking in the cracked plaster, the overturned chair, the broken lamp. Then his gaze dropped to my hand.
“Goodness, Sylvia.”
I turned away, pressing my bleeding knuckles against my jeans. “Don’t.”
He ignored me. “Who are you talking about?”
I clenched my jaw.
“And why the hell are you punching the wall like you’re trying to break your arm?”
His tone was calm, but I could feel the curiosity behind it.
“It’s none of your business,” I muttered.
He moved closer, quiet as shadow. “You kept saying, ‘She’s mine.’”
The way he repeated it made me wince. Hearing the words from someone else’s mouth stripped them of whatever justification I’d given them in my head. They sounded obsessive. Possessive. Wrong.
Still, I couldn’t stop the tremor in my voice when I said, “She is mine.”
Simon tilted his head. “Ellie?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to. His eyes flickered, understanding dawning.
He was the first person and only person I told that Ellie is my mate, and I made him swore that the secret won't see the daylight.
“I saw them,” I said finally. “My brother and her.” The words came out rough. “He had his hand on her. Like....like he owned her.”
Simon said nothing. Just watched me.
The silence pressed down harder than the walls ever could.
Something inside me twisted, dark and ugly. I could feel it moving under my skin, like a shadow uncoiling. The air felt heavy, and for a moment, everything, the blood, the anger, the confusion, all blurred together.
“She’s mine,” I said again, softer, but the words didn’t belong to me anymore. They were the voice of something else.
Simon’s expression shifted not fear exactly, but concern. He could feel it too. The thing inside me. The side I tried so hard to keep buried.
“Don’t,” he said quietly. “You’re losing control.”
I laughed, short and bitter. “I am even in control of myself before?”
“No,” he said, stepping forward. “You’re about to let the darkness out, Sylvia. I can feel it. You’ll tear this place apart.”
“Maybe I want to.”
The words slipped out before I could stop them.
Simon sighed, not the impatient kind, but the resigned kind, the one that said he’d seen this before. He moved in a blur, faster than my eyes could follow, and suddenly his hand was on my shoulder, pushing me back from the wall.
I struggled, jerking against his grip, but he was stronger, impossibly so. Half vampire, half wolf. Strength and instinct blended into something terrifyingly calm.
“Let me go!” I snarled, trying to twist free.
He didn’t. Instead, he shoved me, hard enough that I stumbled backward and hit the floor. The impact knocked the air out of me, and for a moment I just lay there, gasping. The cold from the wooden floor seeped into my skin, anchoring me to the present.
The rage faltered.
My breathing slowed. The trembling in my hands eased, just a fraction.
Simon crouched beside me, his eyes still bright with tension. “You back?”
I stared up at the cracked ceiling. “I don’t know.”
He studied me for a few seconds, then said, “You were close to losing it.”
“I didn’t lose it,” I muttered, but it sounded weak, even to me.
“Your eyes were starting to change,” he said quietly. “And your voice, it wasn’t just you speaking anymore.”
I swallowed hard. I didn’t need him to tell me that. I’d felt it. That creeping sensation at the edges of my mind, the darkness trying to seep through. It always waited for moments like this, for when my emotions were raw, when I was hurt, when anger was easier than pain.
I pressed my palms to my face. My hands were sticky with blood. “I just....” My voice cracked. “I saw them, Simon. I saw her with him. And something inside me snapped.”
He didn’t say anything for a long time. Then, finally: “You can’t own people, Sylvia.”
I dropped my hands and glared at him. “I know that.”
“Do you?” he asked, not unkindly. “Because the way you’re talking... the way you were acting... it’s not about love. It’s about control.”
The words hit harder than any punch I’d thrown. I wanted to argue, but the truth was sitting there, ugly and undeniable.
I stared at the blood on my knuckles. “I didn’t mean for it to happen,” I said quietly. “The anger. The words. It’s just... when I saw them.....”
“You felt like she’d been taken from you.”
I nodded.
He leaned back against the wall, arms crossed. “Even though, may this is how the moon has destined it to be.”
That one stung too. I didn’t answer.
We sat in silence for a while. The room smelled like dust and iron and broken things. The air was thick with the aftertaste of violence. My hand throbbed with every heartbeat, and I realized how pathetic I must look, a grown man sitting on the floor, bleeding because he couldn’t handle seeing someone he cared about with another person.