Page 66 of Incoronate
I shook my head. “But it hurt you.”
“Yeah,” he said, not bothering to deny it as his thumb traced a small circle against my skin. “But I’d rather hurt from the truth than live in a lie.”
He set the sponge aside and stood, his hand trailing from my shoulder as he moved. I looked up to meet his eyes again, to apologize again, but something in his expression stopped me. It wasn’t disappointment or even anger as I would have expected. It was more like the look of a man who had made his peace with loving me on whatever terms life kept handing him, because the alternative—not having me at all—had never really been on the table for him to begin with. A manwho had already decided that loving me through this was a choice he was going to keep making, no matter what it asked of him.
“I meant what I said earlier, Jem. You’re everything to me. Everything.” He moved toward the door, then glanced back one more time. “That doesn’t change just because you love him too.”
The door clicked shut behind him, leaving me alone with the steam and the bubbles and the ache in my chest that felt like it might never heal.
21. A STRANGER IN MY SKIN
Sleep didn’t come easily that night. Then again, it never really did anymore.
Even after the exhaustion of training and hours of fighting compulsion, my body refused to sink fully into anything that resembled rest. No matter how hard I’d tried, my mind stayed half-awake, hovering in that uneasy space between dreaming and vigilance, as if some part of me knew it wasn’t safe to let go completely. Like if I relaxed too much, even for a moment, something terrible would slip through the cracks.
When I finally drifted under, it was shallow and fractured. More like sinking and resurfacing on a current I had no control over than actually sleeping. Images formed and dissolved before they could make sense. Voices threaded through them, indistinct at first, blending into the half-formed landscapes of my dreams. For a while, I didn’t question it. I just floated in it, disoriented and numb and completely unaware that anything was wrong.
And then they stopped pretending to be part of it.
The whispering grew clearer,louder, pulling at me and demanding things I couldn’t quite grasp through the fog of sleep. Foreign thoughts that had no business being in my head, wrapping around my consciousness like they belonged there.
…The time isnow…
I tried to roll over, to bury my face in the pillow and shut them out, but my wrists jerked to a sudden halt. Cold metal bit into my skin as my eyes snapped open to darkness. For a second, I didn’t know where I was. The room was dark and unfamiliar, shadows stretching across the ceiling in a way thatdidn’t feel natural, moonlight filtering through the curtains in pale stripes. My breath came too fast, my heart racing as awareness rushed back in all at once.
I was in my bedroom.
Chained.
My wrists were cuffed above my head, secured to the reinforced headboard exactly the way we’d agreed they would be before we’d gone to bed. A necessary precaution. A last line of defense in case the call returned while I slept. Something to slow me down when the voices surged.
Like they were doing now.
…You must comply…
I pulled against the restraints without thinking, panic spiking through my chest as the voices multiplied. Two distinct tones now, overlapping and weaving together until I couldn’t tell where one command ended and another began.
“No,” I breathed out, my voice threadbare in the darkness.
But my body didn’t seem to care what I wanted. It was already responding to the call, its muscles tensing as something primal and ancient unfurled in my chest. The need to obey. To go to them. To hunt with them. I tugged at the cuffs harder, rattling the chains as they crashed against the headboard.
Movement exploded on either side of the room.
Dominic was up from the armchair before I had time to draw a full breath, his vampire speed bringing him to my bedside in less than a blink. Trace scrambled up from the floor on the other side, his eyes wide and alert despite having been asleep seconds ago.
The lamp clicked on, flooding the room with sudden light that made me wince.
Dominic’s hands were on my face immediately, gripping my jaw and forcing my head still. His eyes locked ontomine, and I watched the moment he understood. Watched his expression go from concern to something colder. More focused. The look of a man bracing for a war he had been preparing for since the moment the anchoring spell ended.
He didn’t ask. He didn’t need to. He could see it in my eyes. Feel it through the bond.
The Horsemen were back.
“Stay with me, angel,” he said, his voice firm. Commanding. There was no trace of the panic I could feel beating against me through the bond like a second pulse. “Keep your eyes on me.”
I tried to focus on Dominic’s face, on the dark fixity of his gaze, but the voices were burrowing deeper. Wrapping around my will like chains far stronger than the ones binding my wrists.
“Trace.” Dominic didn’t look away from me. “Use the bond. Pull her back.”
