Page 54 of Fractured Loyalties (Tainted Souls #2)

The clinic is busy today. Too busy for the jagged knot in my chest. Phones ring, shoes squeak against polished floors, the printer spits out forms with its steady rhythm.

I’m at the reception desk with one of the nurses, reviewing intake schedules for next week because the system glitched again.

The receptionist had to step away, so I slid into her chair, pulling up the files myself.

It should anchor me. The familiar codes and time slots, the little details that give shape to a day. But there’s a current under my skin that won’t quiet.

The paper feels heavier than it should. Each drawer clicks too loud. I can sense something in the air, waiting.

The front door opens.

I don’t look up right away. Too many people come and go here—patients, couriers, deliveries. It’s only when the footsteps cross the lobby, heavy and certain, that I feel it before I see it.

The voice confirms it.

“Hello, Mara.”

I freeze, hand mid-motion over the keyboard.

Then I look up.

And my stomach turns into stone.

Caleb.

He stands in front of the reception desk as if this place belongs to him. Hair cropped shorter than the last time I saw him, jaw lined with stubble, a smile tugging at his mouth like this is casual. Like we’re just two people who happened to cross paths again.

But his eyes betray him. Same eyes that watched me from across dark rooms. Same eyes that measured how far he could push before the bruise would show.

I grip the edge of the desk to keep my hands from shaking. “You shouldn’t be here.”

His smile deepens. “That’s not very welcoming.”

“This is a clinic. Not a place for you.”

He tilts his head, studying me the way he used to before deciding which part of me to tear down first. “Still sharp with that tongue, I see. I missed it.”

The air thickens. Celeste disappears into an exam room down the hall, the nurse beside me bends over a clipboard, and the receptionist is occupied with a call.

The security officer Alec insisted we keep up front leans against the far wall, half-watching the lobby, half-bored.

No one notices what Caleb really is. Not yet.

But I do.

“Leave,” I say, sharper now.

He leans against the desk, folding his arms, jacket shifting just enough for me to catch the outline of metal beneath. My lungs seize.

“Come on, Mara. Don’t be like that. I came to talk.”

“You lost that right a long time ago.”

He chuckles, low in his throat. “You always say that. But you keep listening.”

The room shrinks around us. My hand trembles as I reach under the counter and find the small can of pepper spray Alec insisted we keep there. I pull it free and aim straight for his face.

“Back up.”

His smirk falters, eyes narrowing as he tries to decide whether I’ll actually do it.

I don’t give him the chance.

The spray hisses, sharp and violent. Mist burns across his skin, and he reels back with a snarl, clutching his face, crashing into a chair that splinters to the floor.

The nurse gasps. The receptionist’s voice dies mid-sentence. The guard finally surges forward, hand going to his weapon.

But I don’t lower the can.

I’m finally not shrinking.

I’m starting to fight back, and all on my own.

Caleb’s roar rattles the air, guttural and raw, his hands clawing at his face as the mist burns into his skin.

He doesn’t stay down. He never does. He’s already dragging himself up, gasping, spitting curses, red streaks tearing from the corners of his eyes. The sound of it rips through me, too familiar, too close to the nights when I couldn’t fight back.

The security guard moves then—finally—boots striking the tile, hand braced on his holster. He doesn’t waste words like he’s asking permission. “Stay down!”

Caleb lunges instead, half-blind but feral, swinging wide. His fist glances off the guard’s shoulder, and they collide hard, bodies slamming into the counter. A stack of forms scatters like broken feathers across the floor.

The receptionist yelps into her phone, dropping it into the paperwork. The nurse presses herself into the far corner, hands white around her clipboard.

I don’t move. I don’t breathe. My arm stays raised, canister steady in my grip, even though my hand is shaking so hard I can feel it rattling through the metal. My pulse pounds in my ears, drowning everything.

Caleb’s voice cuts through anyway. A rasp, guttural. “Mara—”

He wrenches against the guard’s grip, trying to break free, eyes burning, spit hanging at the edge of his mouth. His gaze is red, raw, unfocused, but it finds me through the blur, like it always has.

And for a second, it’s not the clinic anymore. It’s the apartment where he kept me locked in, the smell of whiskey and sweat, the echo of slammed doors.

My finger tightens on the pepper spray.

Then another voice slices through the noise.

“Enough.”

Alec.

He strides into the reception area from the hall, mask hanging loose at his collar, gloves still tugged halfway off his hands.

His eyes snap to Caleb, reading him, measuring the danger the way he’s measured failing vitals in an operating room.

His presence changes the room instantly—calm, yes, but not soft.

Controlled in the way that makes people obey.

Caleb thrashes again, teeth bared. The guard holds him, barely, muscles taut and straining.

Alec doesn’t hesitate. He steps forward, voice edged like steel. “You don’t belong here. You walk out, or you leave with police on your back.”

Caleb spits to the side, a streak hitting the tile, ugly against the clean floor. He laughs, rough, broken. “This isn’t your fight, doctor.”

“It is,” Alec answers, each word cutting like bone. “Because this is my clinic. And she’s under my care.”

The weight of those words slices deeper than I expect. My hand tightens around the spray, chest burning.

Caleb turns his head toward me again, and this time there’s no mask in his expression, no charm, nothing but the feral glint of someone who refuses to let go. “You think this stops me?” His lips pull into something too wide, too jagged to be a smile. “You know it doesn’t. You’ll always come back.”

The guard jerks him toward the door, each step a struggle, Caleb’s boots dragging across the tile.

He doesn’t resist enough to need cuffs. He doesn’t need to. His words weigh more than his body ever could.

The door shuts behind him with a heavy thud.

The whole room exhales. The nurse’s clipboard clatters to the counter. The receptionist sags against her chair, phone still off the hook.

The guard mutters into his radio, clipped words about “individual removed from premises,” his eyes darting to me, then back to Alec.

The receptionist bends, scooping papers off the floor with hands that won’t stop trembling.

The nurse presses her back to the wall, her face pale, eyes darting between us all like she doesn’t know where safety actually sits.

And me—I’m still standing, spray raised, chest heaving, hand aching from how tight I’m clutching the can. My skin is on fire, yet cold inside. I can’t lower my arm. It’s like if I let go now, I’ll unravel with it.

Alec turns. His hand comes down on my wrist—not rough, but firm, grounding. His eyes pin mine. “Mara. He’s gone.”

My throat works, but nothing comes out. I can’t trust my voice. My chest feels too tight, like if I try to speak, something raw will break loose.

So I just nod once, my hand still refusing to let go.

Alec sees it. He knows. His voice stays firm but softer now, threaded with something that makes me want to sink or lash out—I can’t tell which. “Give it to me, Mara.”

I shake my head. My throat feels raw. “No.”

His mouth tenses, but he doesn’t argue. He doesn’t push. He just keeps his hand there, warm and steady, until the can eases down by inches, my grip loosening enough for him to take it.

The door at the far end opens again. Not Caleb. Someone else.

Celeste.

Her heels strike the tile like punctuation. She takes in the mess in one glance: the overturned chair, the guard with his radio, the papers scattered, the smell of pepper spray still clinging to the air. Her gaze finds me last. And it holds.

“Tell me,” she says, and it isn’t a question.

The receptionist stammers something about “a man—violent—security stepped in.”

The guard adds, “It’s under control.”

Alec says nothing. He doesn’t move his hand from my wrist.

But Celeste isn’t listening to them. She’s watching me. Measuring. I know that look. It’s the same one she’s given patients who sit across from her in the clinic’s counseling rooms—trying to decide if they’re about to break or if they’ve already broken.

I want to say something. To explain. To tell her I’m fine. The words don’t come. My chest feels bound tight, throat burning.

Her eyes narrow, just slightly. But she doesn’t press. She turns instead to Alec. “Get her out of reception. Take her to the back.”

Alec nods. His hand leaves my wrist to settle against my shoulder, guiding me toward the hallway. My feet move because his pressure tells them to, not because I’ve chosen.

As we pass the front glass, something tugs at me. A flicker at the corner of vision. I glance sideways.

And there she is.

Lydia.

Across the street, leaning against the hood of a dark sedan like she belongs there. Phone in hand, head tilted down as if she’s scrolling—but I know her too well. Her gaze isn’t totally fixed on the phone she’s pretending to scroll through; our eyes catch once through the glass.

My chest knots. She isn’t panicking. She isn’t surprised. She’s watching.

I stumble a little, my shoulder bumping Alec’s arm. He steadies me without comment, steering me into the hall. But my eyes stay locked on that window until the corridor walls cut the view off.

I want to stop. To turn back. To demand why Lydia was there, why she always seems to be a shadow when I least expect it. But the words are locked behind my teeth, caged by everything I don’t understand.