Page 251 of Fractured Allegiance

Elias’s eyes cut up, cold and precise.. “You’re not.”

“I am,” I bite back. “If this is my cage, then I should also have a say.”

The silence stretches. Elias’s throat works, his stare narrowing.

And then Silas speaks, his voice steady but threaded with iron. “She goes.”

My head jerks toward him. He doesn’t even look at me. His eyes are locked on Elias, his shoulders squared like he’s ready for a fight. “She knows that place better than any of us. She’s not baggage; she’s the blade.”

The way he says it is wrong. It’s not defense. It’s possession. Like my choice only counts because he’s already claimed it.

Elias notices too. His silence is heavier than his words.

The maps cover the table in shadows and ink, every line like a scar. Elias taps out routes, points of entry, fallback positions, his voice clipped, efficient. Jax and Ren are names in the margins, their usefulness already stretched thin.

I force myself to focus, but my skin tingles when Silas shifts beside me, when his hand brushes mine, his thumb lingersagainst my knuckle, sending heat that’s hot enough to make me falter on the next breath.

I glance up, catch him looking at me like the whole damn room doesn’t exist. My stomach knots hard. I pull my hand back, but too late; Elias has already seen it. He doesn’t comment, but the weight in his stare says enough.

Mara finally breaks the tension, her voice softer than the scrape of paper. “Celeste called earlier. She and Alec are engaged.”

The words feel like they come from another world. Light and distant, untouchable. For a moment the room softens, edges blurring with something almost warm.

I picture Celeste’s bold smile, Alec’s steady hands, the life they built out of something cleaner than this. The contrast twists deep in my chest: envy burning and alive, and beneath it, a strange warmth I can’t quite name.

“That’s lovely,” I hear myself say, though the words taste like rust.

Mara smiles faintly, but her eyes flick between me and Elias, then me and Silas. Like she sees the storm brewing and knows better than to step closer.

The maps sit between us like a loaded gun. Drazen’s name bleeding across the paper. And all I can feel is the weight of Silas’s touch still ghosting across my hand.

Elias lays out fallback routes; Silas keeps too close. The maps are still spread across the table when Elias calls it done. “We strike by 4pm, when they least expect it.” And just like that, he steps out.

The house settles. But the air doesn’t.

I’m left with the ache of Silas’s stare burning into me, the feel of his thumb still pressed to my knuckle long after it’s gone. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand him.

I leave the kitchen first, climbing the narrow staircase to the spare rooms above. The walls are old plaster, cracked and painted over too many times, blinds drawn low against the street. The air smells faintly of dust and old wood, the kind of place where nothing ever really gets clean.

I slam the door shut behind me, not because I think it’ll keep him out, but because I want him to know I’m done pretending.

It doesn’t even take a minute. His shadow breaks across the gap under the door, then the handle turns, and he’s inside like it was never locked.

“You want to know the simple truth? You scare me more than Drazen ever has.” The words cut out of me before he could speak. My hands are fists at my sides, nails digging half-moons into my palms. “And I don’t know what that makes me.”

His expression darkens, his eyes catching mine like a trap snapping shut. He steps forward, closing the gap, his voice rough enough to scrape bone. “It makes you exactly where you need to be.”

I should laugh. I should spit in his face. But instead, I shift back into the dresser, the wood biting into the backs of my thighs. My pulse hammers against my throat, too loud, too frantic. He sees it. He always sees it.

He plants his hands on either side of me, boxing me in. The weight of him crowds every inch of the room, every inch of me.

“You think I didn’t see it?” His mouth is near my ear, words jagged. “The way you looked at me in the basement. Likeyou were waiting for me to break. Like you wanted to know how far I’d go.”

My chest heaves, fury and hunger twisting until I can’t tell one from the other. “I wanted to know if there was anything human left in you.”

His laugh is humorless. “And what if there isn’t?”

The answer tears out of me in motion instead of words. I grab his collar and claim his mouth in a kiss. It’s not gentle. It’s punishment, teeth and fury. He takes it, deepens it, his tongue forcing mine open, his grip snapping around my wrists to pin them above my head.