Page 32 of Fractured Loyalties

“You’re wrong.”

I look up.

Elias leans forward slightly, elbows on his knees. “Fear’s a reflex. It feels permanent when it isn’t. Eventually, something else will push harder—anger, hunger, want. Something else always does.”

“Is that how it worked for you?”

His smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “It’s still working.”

There’s something about the way he says it that cracks open a part of me I didn’t realize was still buried. I should be repulsed by the violence that lives under his skin.

I should question the way his world orbits mine so suddenly. But instead, all I can think about is the shape of his mouth. The way it wraps around words like he’s choosing each one with care.

He stands slowly, not toward me, just to stretch. His shirt shifts slightly, revealing a trace of ink along his ribs—some kind of lettering I can’t quite read.

I stare too long.

He notices.

But he doesn’t move to cover it.

“You should sleep,” he says softly.

I nod, but make no move to lie down.

He waits another moment before returning to the chair.

The lights are low now. The room has a quiet weight to it, as if even the air is holding its breath.

I close my eyes as sleep takes me under.

And for the first time in weeks, I don’t dream of Caleb’s voice.

I dream of Elias’s silence.

_____________________________________________________________

I wake before the sky begins to pale outside the window, the room still washed in the soft gray of pre-dawn.

I lie still, unsure if I’ve slept at all or just hovered in that gray place between exhaustion and awareness. The room is quiet. Elias’s chair is empty.

Panic doesn’t rise. Not yet. Instead, a strange chill presses at the edges of my skin—a hollow ache that blooms in the absence of him.

Then I hear it: the distant sound of movement beyond the guest room door, not loud. Just a presence.

I sit up slowly, every muscle stiff from sleeping half-upright. My fingers smooth the edge of the wool blanket. I notice the throw pillow on the floor beside the chair. He used it.

The man who stood like a wall between me and chaos…slept on a damn pillow beside my bed.

My throat tightens.

I slide from the bed, feet cold against the floor, and pad to the door. I open it an inch, just enough to hear the soft rustle of paper, the quiet clink of ceramic against granite.

Coffee.

I step out, cautiously. The hallway is already beginning to glow with the faintest hint of early light—soft, diffused, not yet strong enough to declare morning. This house absorbs silence like it was built to muffle the world.

Elias is in the kitchen.