Page 32 of Fractured Loyalties (Tainted Souls #2)

I wake to heat.

Not sunlight. Not breath. Just him.

Elias, stretched along my back like a second skin, his thigh hooked around mine, one arm slung over my waist, anchoring me. His fingers twitch slightly against my stomach, but he doesn’t stir. Not yet.

The blanket is twisted halfway off the bed. My skin is slick with the aftermath of everything we didn’t say last night. Everything we did instead.

I stay still. I don’t want to move. Not because I’m afraid of waking him. But because part of me doesn’t know what I’ll find in his eyes when he does.

This isn’t peace.

It's a pause.

A fragile kind of quiet, where the sheets are still warm from war and the walls haven’t started whispering yet.

I tilt my head, just enough to catch his profile in the dim light. His lashes are dark against his cheek, jaw slack with sleep, lips parted like they forgot how to hold secrets.

He looks young like this.

Not soft. But unguarded.

It should scare me more than it does.

My body aches in places I forgot I had. My thighs. My ribs. The hollow behind my knee where his hand pinned my legs up, pinned hard enough to bruise.

I can still feel the echo of his mouth between my legs, the scrape of his teeth, the sound he made right before he came undone inside me like he was drowning and I was the last breath he’d ever take.

I should feel marked.

Instead, I feel claimed.

And that’s the part that unsettles me.

Because it’s not just physical. It’s not about dominance or sex or even violence.

It’s about the way he looked at me after. Like he’d already decided I was his.

Like any threat to me was a threat to him.

I don’t know what to do with that kind of protection. I’ve never trusted it before. Not when it came from a man like Elias Voss.

Especially not now.

He shifts behind me. Just slightly. His breath grazes the nape of my neck, and his arm tightens across my middle.

Awake.

He doesn’t say anything. Neither do I.

Not at first.

Then: “I thought you didn’t sleep like the dead.”

His voice is rough. “I do. When I’m not in enemy territory.”

That makes my brow furrow. “You’re really confident this place is safe?”

He doesn’t answer right away. Just buries his face in the curve of my neck and exhales like the smell of my skin is more important than words.

Then: “Safe isn’t a place anymore. It’s a person.”

The way he says it—low, firm, certain—hits something sharp in me. I close my eyes. Swallow. Let the silence settle between us again until my voice sounds like it belongs to someone steadier than I feel.

“You mean you.”

He kisses my shoulder once. “I mean you.”

I roll over to face him. His hand shifts with the movement. From my stomach to my waist, then lower across my back. Possessive, even in stillness.

Our faces are too close. My mouth aches from last night. My eyes sting like I cried in my sleep, even though I didn’t.

“You should’ve told me,” I say. “About everything that you are, every little detail.”

He looks at me like the words hurt. Not because they’re wrong. But because he knows they’re right.

“I didn’t want to pull you into it.”

“You didn’t pull me into anything,” I say. “I was already here. I’m just done pretending I’m not.”

His fingers flex against me. Not to hurt. Just to feel.

“You don’t have to stay,” he says.

“Yes, I do.”

We don’t blink. Don’t breathe.

Just stare.

Because what’s between us now isn’t lust. Isn’t tension. It’s tethered. Anchored. And neither of us knows what it’ll look like when the storm hits.

He finally pulls back, sits up. The blanket falls away, baring the tattoos that crawl over his spine like warning signs. His body is beautiful in that brutal way—scarred, cut, coiled with violence held just beneath the skin.

I watch him rise. Stretch. Crack his neck.

He’s not a lover right now.

He’s a weapon.

And I’m not sure if I’m the trigger or the safety.

He turns toward the bathroom without a word. I hear the water start. Then his voice, thrown casually over his shoulder like it doesn’t matter:

“Don’t leave the house today.”

I narrow my eyes at his back. “Wasn’t planning to.”

But that’s not the same as agreeing.

Because the thing about stillness?

It only lasts until the next move.

And I’m not sure who’s going to make it first.

I dress while the water runs.

Not slowly. Not like a woman savoring the feel of worn cotton or cool air on damp skin. I dress like I might need to run before the next breath. Like armor. Like every layer might be the last one anyone sees.

T-shirt. Black. Jeans, tight enough to hold a knife in the waistband. Elias’s hoodie, zipped up to the collarbone. Hair back. No makeup. No softness.

The water shuts off. The door doesn’t open.

I leave the bedroom before it does.

The hallway is too quiet. The way it always is when something’s shifting just beneath the floorboards.

I pass the security panel. No alerts. But that doesn’t mean it’s clean. It just means the thing watching us knows how to breathe without being heard.

In the kitchen, I make coffee.

One scoop too strong. I don’t wait for it to finish before I pour the first mug. Bitter steam burns my throat on the first sip.

My phone pings on the counter.

I stare at it for a full second before I flip it over.

UNKNOWN ID: “Still breathing?”

No name. No header. But I know who it is.

Not Caleb. Worse.

This one doesn’t have a voice yet. Just a presence. A careful, quiet push against the edges of my life. One I can feel but can’t identify.

I don’t respond.

Elias walks into the kitchen barefoot, damp hair darkening the collar of his black T-shirt. He doesn’t speak until he’s poured his own cup and sipped it once.

Then: “You got something.”

I nod. “So did you.”

He raises a brow.

I tilt my phone toward him. Let him read the message.

He goes still.

“Is that the same string as the one from yesterday?” he asks.

“No.”

His jaw clenches. “They’re escalating.”

“Feels more like circling.”

Elias leans against the counter. Every inch of him controlled. But the knuckles on his coffee mug are pale.

“I can trace it,” he says.

I shake my head. “That’s what they want.”

He narrows his eyes. “You think it’s bait.”

“No. I think it’s a mirror. They’re not asking for a reply. They’re checking for movement. For fear.”

He doesn’t argue.

Because he knows I’m right.

“I want to dig through the node logs again,” he says. “See if they bounced through anything we missed. Something domestic. Quiet.”

“I want to go back to my apartment.”

His reaction is immediate. Sharp. “No.”

“Just to check. Something’s off about yesterday. Something doesn’t line up.”

“We’ll send Lydia.”

“I need to see it myself.”

Elias’s eyes harden. Not in anger. In calculation.

“You don’t trust me to see it for you?” he asks.

“I don’t trust what you won’t tell me.”

That lands.

He sets his cup down, too gentle.

“Mara—”

“I know you think you’re protecting me by keeping me on the sidelines. But I’m not on the bench anymore. I’m in the game.”

He takes a step forward. I don’t move.

“I don’t want to watch you get ripped open,” he says. Quiet. Flat. “Not because of me. Not even because of anything at all.”

“Then don’t make me do it alone.”

The silence between us is heavy. Almost holy.

Then his voice, quieter than it should be: “We go together. That’s the deal.”

“Fine.”

His hand brushes mine, not by accident.

And for a second, everything else falls away.

Not the danger. Not the threads. Just this—the hum of the room. The heat between our fingers. The question neither of us wants to ask.

What happens if we lose?

The answer is too ugly to name.

So I finish my coffee.

And we start preparing to leave.

The drive is short.

But it feels longer, like the city is holding its breath around us. Every stoplight lingers half a beat too long. Every pedestrian moves just a little too deliberately. Like the whole street’s rehearsing something.

Elias drives with one hand on the wheel, the other resting loosely on his thigh. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t look at me. But I can feel the coil of him beside me, all steel and storm, counting exits before he even hits the turn signal.

My building comes into view, and I already feel it—that static curl at the base of my skull. The thing that told me, last time, that Caleb wasn’t just a ghost.

“The northwest corner’s clean,” Elias murmurs. “Camera looped. Window paths hold.”

I nod, but I don’t relax.

He parks in the alley behind the complex, second level of the old loading dock, where no one bothers to check plates. We exit fast, fluid. Like we’ve done this before. Because we have. Just not together.

The back stairs creak in places. He clocks each one without asking. I let my fingers graze the rail, not for balance, just to remember how this place used to feel.

We reach my door.

It looks untouched.

But it’s not.

“Someone ran a print reader over the lock,” I say. “The paint’s still curing.”

Elias’s head tilts. He steps in close, brushes the edge with a gloved thumb. “Recent.”

I key in the code. The pad blinks. Accepts it.

But I don’t open the door.

He steps in front of me. Uses his shoulder to press it open just wide enough to slip through.

Then he disappears inside.

I wait.

Count to fifteen.

He comes back. Eyes sharp. “Clear. But something’s off.”

I enter.

The air smells wrong. Not dirty. Not foreign. Just off.

Like something opened and never closed. Like a thread still fraying.

I move to the kitchen. The cupboard door is half-open. My favorite mug sits in the dish rack—wrong side up. I never do that. Elias trails behind me, touching nothing, watching everything.

I reach for the drawer beneath the sink.

The false bottom is still there.

I lift it.

Empty.

I stare at the space like I expect it to lie to me.

It doesn’t.

Elias’s voice is low. “What was in there?”

“A flash drive.”

“Yours?”

“No. My mother’s.”

He stiffens.

“You never mentioned it.”

“I didn’t think it mattered.”

“What was on it?”

“I don’t know. She left it to me when she died. Said it wasn’t time yet.”