Page 296 of Fractured Allegiance

Just us: fractured, claimed, and finally free.

Epilogue – Lydia – Taken

Months later in a coastal hideout

The sea has a sound I’ve never trusted. It’s too vast, too constant. It moves like it’s keeping secrets.

Silas says that’s what makes it honest.

I say it’s what makes it dangerous.

The house we chose sits half-buried in the cliffs, a forgotten fisherman’s retreat turned fortress. It smells of salt, cedar, and the faint trace of smoke that clings to our skin no matter how long we’ve been here. The windows face the horizon, wide and open, as if daring the world to find us again.

This kind of place is hidden from maps. No one asks who we are, and we don’t ask who built the walls. I like it that way. The sea keeps its secrets, and we keep ours.

Inside, the fire burns low. Papers scatter the dining table: maps, ledgers, and the remnants of what will soon be our network. Not Elias’s. Not Drazen’s. Ours.

Silas handles the infrastructure: logistics, routes, names. I handle the people. It’s a division that works; his discipline, my intuition. Together, we’ve built something halfway between order and sin.

Elias and Mara came two nights ago. Brought news from the mainland: Celeste and Alec’s wedding date, another storm rolling through Miramont, whispers that Drazen’s empire is nothing but ash and rumor now. Elias looked lighter, almost human. Mara, radiant in that quiet, impossible way that makes me ache for something I’ll never admit I want.

Now they’re gone. The world outside this cliff feels far away.

Silas stands by the window, his shirt half-buttoned, hair damp from the rain. He watches the surf, the way it breaks and folds like muscle. There’s a gun on the sill, a relic more than a threat.

When he turns, the air changes. Always does. Like the gravity shifts toward him.

“You’re thinking very loudly again, sweetheart,” he says.

“Bad habit,” I answer.

He crosses the room, slow but sure, until he’s close enough that I can see the pale scar near his collarbone, the one I left. His hand catches my chin, his thumb tracing the faint line along my jaw. It isn’t gentle, but it’s careful, the way a man touches something he’s fought to keep.

“You keep looking at the door,” he says. “You think I’ll walk through it.”

“I think everyone walks away eventually.”

He leans in until his words scrape the edge of my mouth. “Then stop thinking.”

His lips claim mine, the kiss isn’t soft. It’s the kind that rewrites the body’s rules: a collision, not a question. His mouth devours mine with a raw urgency, tongue thrusting deep, tasting me like he's starved for weeks.

I gasp into him, my hands moving before my mind catches up—gripping his shoulders, sliding up to his neck, fingers tangling in the damp strands of his hair.

The stubble on his jaw rasps against my skin, sending sparks down my spine.

His hands roam greedily, one cupping the back of my head to angle me deeper into the kiss, the other sliding down my back to grip my ass, pulling me flush against him.

I feel the hard length of his arousal pressing insistently against my thigh, hot and insistent through the fabric of our clothes.

The world outside fades, until all I can feel is the pull of him—the way his breath mingles with mine, hot and ragged, the faint taste of salt and whiskey on his tongue.

My body responds instinctively, hips grinding against his in a slow, teasing rhythm that makes him groan into my mouth. His fingers dig into my flesh, kneading, possessive, as if he's marking me already.

He lifts me easily, my legs wrapping around his hips as if my body remembers something my mind refuses to name.

The gun falls from the windowsill with a muted thud, forgotten in the haze of desire. Somewhere behind us, the sea hurls itself against the rocks, and the whole house trembles, mirroring the quake building inside me.

I lock my ankles behind his back, my core pressing against his hardness, the friction sending jolts of pleasure through me with every step he takes. His hands support me under my thighs, thumbs brushing teasingly close to where I ache for him most, making me whimper against his lips.