Page 249 of Fractured Allegiance

Then Silas mutters under his breath, but the silence in the room carries it anyway: "I'm done with them. Why can't she get that? I’m not theirs anymore."

“Bullshit,” Elias says, voice cracking like a whip. “You don’t get to just walk away from the Bureau. Not alive.”

The weight in the room presses tighter. Mara lays her hand on Elias’s arm again, a tether. He doesn’t shake her off, but he doesn’t look at her either. His eyes stay locked on Silas.

And me? I can’t seem to unclench my fists.

“Then whose are you?” I whisper.

Silas’s stare cuts to me. The whole room narrows down to that look. The way he pins me without touching, the way his voice drops to something stripped and raw.

“Yours.”

The word slams through me, harder than any bullet last night.

The word hangs there.

Yours.

Like a brand I didn’t ask for, pressed into my skin in front of Elias, in front of Mara, in a kitchen that smells of burnt toast and coffee strong enough to strip paint.

Elias doesn’t blink. He just sets his mug down hard enough that it cracks against the saucer. “Obsession talking again. Not allegiance. Don’t confuse the two.”

Mara doesn’t speak, but I see the way her hand curls tighter against his arm. Not stopping him. Just reminding him she’s there.

I push back from the table, the chair legs shrieking against the tile. My pulse thuds hard in my throat, too loud, too fast. “Obsession or not, I’m not a fucking prize to stake your claim on, Silas.”

He doesn’t move closer, doesn’t back off either. His stare doesn’t slip. “You think I don’t know that?”

“Do you?” My voice cuts cold, harder than I mean it to. I want it to hurt. “Because every time you say you’re not Bureauanymore, I hear it in the same tone Drazen used when he called me his leverage. Different leash. Same chain.”

That cracks something. He takes a step forward, his shadow spilling over the table. “I’m not Drazen.”

“No?” I’m on my feet now, shoulders squared, the fork still in my hand like a blade. “You torture men in basements, you lie to your handler, you drag me through bullets and then tell me I’m the only thing keeping you breathing. How the fuck is that different?”

His chest rises once. His voice lowers to something darker. “Because I don’t use pain to control you. I use it to protect you.”

The words make the air hum. My grip tightens on the fork. I want to laugh, want to spit at him, want to kiss him until I can’t breathe. The pull tears me in half.

Elias’s voice cuts through before I can move. “You hear yourself, Lydia? You’re already bending. He’s not protecting you; he’s binding you to him. And it’s the same story every time. Men who swear they’re different while they watch you bleed for them.”

I snap toward him. “And what are you, Elias? A savior? You used me as your shadow for years. You taught me to bleed quietly, prettily, so no one saw it. Don’t stand there and act like you don’t recognize the mirror.”

The silence after that lands like glass shattering. Mara’s eyes flick to Elias, her hand still tethered to him, and for the first time, I see something ripple across his face. Not shame. Not guilt. Something heavier. Something that looks a little too much like truth.

Silas closes the distance in two strides. He doesn’t touch me—not yet, at least—but his presence scorches me down to the marrow. His voice is stripped bare when he says, “You’re notleverage to me. You’re not my mission. You are who I threw my mission aside for. You’re what matters to me. You’re the only thing I won’t lose.”

Each word drips fealty.

And I don’t know which part of me wants to shatter more: the part that knows I should walk away, or the part that wants to believe him.

The room feels too tight. The walls lean in, the blinds slice the light into bars across the table, the smell of scorched toast thick enough to choke on.

Elias exhales, then pushes his mug away. “I’ve heard enough.” His gaze flicks between us, between Silas burning holes into me and me refusing to step back. “Sort this out or let it kill you. But don’t do it in my kitchen.”

He stands, chair scraping, and Mara moves with him. She doesn’t let go of his arm. She doesn’t even look at me. They both vanish down the hall, their footsteps fading into the safehouse’s thin bones.

The silence that follows is louder than the fight.