Page 162 of Somno Slave

How can he reject me in three different bodies?

My fingers curl slowly against the armrest of the chair.

I inhale, but before I can make too much sense of it all, something inside of me tightens. The anger is sudden and white-hot, rising so fast it scares me. My nails bite into my palms now. I don’t recognise this feeling—this raw, desperate need to break the stillness, to force him toacknowledgeus.

Me.

It doesn’t feel like my thought.

It arrives too fast, too sharp, like something placed directly into my head rather than born there. For a second I just sit with it, staring at the glass, my pulse thudding hard enough to make my hands shake.

Three days.

Three days of silence.

Three days of lying awake in the dark, waiting for him. Three days of second-guessing every word, every look, every mistake. Three days of being ignored like I am the one begging, the one left pacing the edges of absence like some pathetic, starving thing.

I look at him sitting there beneath fluorescent light and suddenly the photographs overlap him perfectly.

Blood beneath his fingernails. The opened doctor. The therapist report. The priest hanging against stone.

My stomach knots violently.

He should disgust me. He should terrify me enough to make this easy.

Instead, all I can think islook at me. Please fucking look at me.

I reach for the microphone.

Even as I do it, I know I shouldn’t. I know exactly how reckless it is, how unprofessional, how insane. I should sit down. Breathe. Let the feeling pass. Pretend I still have control over myself.

But I don’t. Not where he is concerned.

My hand closes around it anyway, fingers tightening too hard, and before I can stop myself—before pride or reason can drag me back—my thumb presses the button.

The click sounds far too loud and suddenly, there is no taking it back.

“Speak.” The word tears out of me sharper than I mean it to, slicing clean through the room before I can soften it.

My hand tightens around the microphone.

“God damn it, I know you can,” I say, louder now, my voice cracking against the glass between us. “Speak.”

It isn’t a request. It sounds too close to pleading, too close to fury.

Too close to confession.

Silence follows. Every head turns to face me. All but his, and it’s fucking devastating.

Peter whirls in his chair, eyes wide, fury and alarm colliding on his face as he looks straight at the glass. His lips pull tight, jaw popping. I see the displeasure spreading across his face. I can almost hear the wordsyou’re firedbeing screamed through my mind.

I’ve broken protocol.

It kicks in properly now.

Oh, fuck. I’ve broken protocol!

The room goes deathly silent. The quietness cuts more violently than it did before.