Page 127 of Crushed Vow

“No,” he whispered, voice shaking with obsession. “But you did. And I keep waking up every damn day hoping you’ll remember what it felt like. To be mine.”

There was a flicker in his voice then—something almost vulnerable—but it was quickly drowned by something darker.

His gaze raked over me, and his expression turned to ice. “What happened between you and him?” he asked, the words clipped. “Did he touch you?”

“That’s none of your business.”

That was the wrong answer.

He straightened slowly, something shifting behind his glasses—some ancient, territorial fury waking up.

Then, without taking his eyes off me, he pulled out his phone and tapped something. One second passed. Two. Then the door slammed open with a violent crack.

Brooks stepped in—dragging Manuel.

He was unrecognizable. His crisp blazer was soaked and torn, his face a canvas of bruises and dried blood. His lip was split, one eye nearly swollen shut. Chains bit into his wrists andankles as he hit the floor with a sound that made my stomach twist.

“Cassian, what the hell—” I shot to my feet.

“He didn’t touch me!” The words burst out of me, panicked. “I swear—he didn’t lay a hand on me!”

Cassian’s expression didn’t waver. “Then explain the hickey on your neck.”

“What?” My hand froze in the air. “There’s no—”

But even as I said it, my fingers scrambled for my phone. I turned on the front camera, angling it shakily toward my neck.

My stomach dropped.

There it was.

Faint. Purple. A kiss-shaped bruise blooming just below my jawline—delicate, damning.

“I... I don’t...” I couldn’t finish. My voice broke. “I don’t know how that got there.”

Cassian said nothing.

Nothing.

Just stared.

Behind his glasses, I saw it—his breath catching, his shoulders stilling.

Fear.

Not the fear of being betrayed.

But the fear of losing me all over again.

The way his hands trembled at his sides, like he didn’t know whether to destroy or fall to his knees. Like this single mark on my skin had undone him. And maybe it had.

“I swear to you,” I whispered, barely able to breathe. “No one touched me. I don’t know where this came from, Cassian, I swear on everything I have left—”

“You’re mine,” he whispered, brokenly. “You were mine. And I’ve been trying, I’ve been trying so goddamn hard. but I can’t keep doing this if you don’t let me protect you. I can’t—” Hisbreath stuttered. “You have no idea what I’ve done to keep you breathing.”

And just like that, the man who’d once dragged me in chains stood before me—shaking.

Unmoored. Not from power. But from me.