Page 247 of Fractured Allegiance

He pushes off the railing and goes back inside, leaving me with the echo of Lydia’s kiss still burning on my mouth and Naomi’s leash still tugging faintly in the dark.

Every one of my muscles is tight. I’ll burn every leash. Every order. Every man who thinks she’s theirs to cage.

Even if she keeps calling me a monster.

Because, whether Lydia can stomach it or not, monsters keep what’s theirs.

I step back in after Elias’s laughter fades, and the safehouse feels too crowded. Too many bodies, too many ghosts, all moving around under the same roof. I can hear Jax stomping across the floorboards, Ren muttering to himself as he checks the locks for the fifth time. Mara’s voice hums low from the kitchen, steadying them both the way only she can.

But none of it holds me.

My feet take me down the hall, past peeling paint and doors that don’t fit their frames. Past the faint stink of antiseptic. I stop at the one door I shouldn’t be near.

Hers. The bedroom assigned to her that we both share.

The light inside is dim, leaking out in a thin strip at the floor. I lean against the door frame, arms folded, letting the wood bite into my shoulders. I should move. I should sleep. I should do a hundred things.

Instead, I stand there.

The door shifts. Not fully opening, just moving with my weight as I watch her change sides on the bed. I can picture it too clearly: the sheet tangled at her hips, her bruises stark against pale skin in the spill of light from the streetlamp outside.

Her face turned away from the door, jaw set even in exhaustion, like she’s still fighting me in her dreams.

She knows I’m here. I feel it in the pause. The moment stalls, charged and brittle, like a wire vibrating on the edge of breaking.

I don’t knock. I don’t enter. I just stay, watching that strip of light, listening to the subtle shift of fabric as she moves again.

It’s not peaceful. It’s not safety. It’s obsession stretched raw.

And when I finally push off the door frame, leaving her to her fragile sleep, the vow that’s been burning since Bellamy sears hotter in my chest.

I’ll burn Drazen to ash. I’ll cut Naomi’s leash for good. I’ll put a bullet in anyone who even thinks of reaching for her.

Even if that makes me look like a monster to her.

Because the truth is simple, brutal even, and I don’t bother lying to myself anymore: I may be a monster, but this monster worships at her altar.

Chapter 31 – Lydia - Thin Ice

I sit at the kitchen table yet again, hunched forward with my palms braced against wood that smells faintly of disinfectant and smoke. The table’s wooden grain is scarred from years of use, faint knife-marks crisscrossing like old wounds. Elias is at the counter, pouring coffee into chipped mugs, his shoulders square under a black shirt, every line of him stiff as a warning.

Mara hovers by the stove. Not fussing—she’s never been that type—but the way she moves a pan, sets bread out, it’s careful, precise. Like she knows, feeding men with guns and bad tempers is a way of keeping blood off the floorboards. She doesn’t incessantly talk just to fill up the quiet. She doesn’t need to. Her presence smooths the edges without asking for thanks.

Silas leans in the doorway, one shoulder propped against the frame, arms crossed. His shirt is fresh. It’s a new one some of Elias’s people brought in last night after the SUV limped back with its tires shredded, but it hangs wrinkled on him, collar open enough that I can see the line of his throat, the bruise blooming at his collarbone. My bruise.

He hasn’t said a word. Not since the kitchen last night. Not since I called him a monster, and he told me that made me safe.

My jaw aches from grinding it in my sleep, but I can’t stop watching him. The way his eyes skim every corner of the room. The way his gaze catches mine when I’m not careful, and for a second it feels like he’s pinning me the same way he did against the kitchen wall.

I look away first. Always.

“Eat.” Elias sets a plate in front of me, not asking, not gentle. Two slices of toast and fried eggs. His version of care.

“I’m not hungry,” I say.

“Eat anyway.” He doesn’t look at me when he says it, just pours his own coffee. Mara glances at him, then at me, something soft flickering across her face. She doesn’t step in. She knows better than to put herself between us.

Silas shifts, the scrape of his boot against tile loud in the quiet. He doesn’t move further in. He doesn’t need to. Just standing there, watching, is enough to keep the air tight.