Page 55 of Fractured Loyalties (Tainted Souls #2)

By the time Alec leads me into the staff lounge, my legs are shaking. The smell of coffee grounds and antiseptic hits my nose, sharp and grounding, but my chest is still tight.

Alec closes the door behind us.

“Mara,” he says.

And for the first time since Caleb slammed through the clinic doors, I realize I’m trembling so hard my teeth nearly knock together.

Alec doesn’t crowd me. He gives just enough space that I don’t feel cornered, but not enough that I forget he’s there.

My chest won’t steady. Every inhale feels too thin, every exhale like it catches in my throat.

Alec watches, eyes measured but sharp. “You did the right thing.”

I almost laugh, but it comes out cracked. “It doesn’t feel like it.”

“He came at you. You stopped him. That’s not wrong.”

I shake my head. “You didn’t see his face.”

Alec doesn’t argue, but his silence says he did see enough—more than enough. The memory of Caleb’s voice still claws at my skin.

The door opens. Celeste steps inside, closing it behind her. Her gaze locks on me, and I feel smaller under it. Not judged—examined.

She crosses to the counter, pours herself a coffee with the kind of composure that makes me hate her a little. Not because she’s cruel, but because she makes control look effortless when mine is slipping away.

Her voice is calm, level. “Security is calling the police. They’ll file a report.”

The words hit like ice water. My head snaps up. “No.”

Celeste studies me over the rim of her mug. “No?”

“I don’t want him—” My chest tightens. The words scrape on the way out. “If they arrest him, he’ll come back worse. You don’t understand—”

“Don’t I?” she asks, cutting in. “You think I’ve never seen what men like him do? That I don’t know exactly how they circle, how they bite deeper when someone finally says no?”

I freeze. Her voice hasn’t risen, but the edge in it is harder than Alec’s.

She steps closer, setting the mug down with a soft click. “The question isn’t whether he’ll come back. It’s whether you’ll still be standing when he does.”

Something inside me twists hard. I want to say I will. That I’ll survive like I always do. But the image of Caleb clawing through pepper spray, laughing, promising I’d always come back—it sits heavy in my gut.

My voice cracks, thin. “I don’t know if I can.”

Alec exhales through his nose. He doesn’t reach for me, but I can feel the tension in him, the way he’s holding himself still, like moving too close might shatter me.

Celeste tilts her head, studying me. And then she says something that cuts sharper than Caleb’s laugh.

“You talk and know he’s the danger. But the way you keep swallowing your truth—that’s what’s going to bleed you out.”

The words hit like a strike to the ribs. I feel my pulse in my throat, hot and choking. My gaze drops to the floor, to the faint scuffs in the tile. Because if I look up, she’ll see it—the truth I’ve been burying since Elias dragged me out of Volker’s walls.

That I want his darkness. That I’m drawn to it, even when it terrifies me.

That a part of me is relieved Caleb came back, because it forced Elias closer.

Celeste doesn’t press, but the weight of her stare tells me she already knows too much.

And beneath it all, Lydia’s face flashes again in my mind. Out there, leaning against her car like the street belonged to her. Watching, but not for herself. For him.

Because of course she’s not here on her own. Elias sent her. He doesn’t trust me to walk a block without a leash hidden in someone else’s hand.

The thought digs deeper than Caleb’s words.

Caleb wants me cornered.

Elias wants me tethered.

And I can’t decide which kind of cage is harder to breathe in.

When I step out of the lounge, the air in the reception feels heavier, carrying the ghost of pepper spray and panic.

The guard who restrained Caleb is at the front doors now, speaking into his radio, eyes scanning every corner of the street outside.

Another uniform has joined him, posture rigid, hand resting against the grip of his holster.

The clinic never felt like a fortress before, but now every edge of it hums with vigilance.

I keep my arms folded across my stomach, pressing my palms into my ribs to keep from shaking. The receptionist glances up at me, her face pale, her expression careful. No words, just that look—the kind people give survivors when they want to ask but don’t dare.

I can’t stand it. I move past her toward the side corridor. The staff move around me, purposeful, trying not to stare, but I can feel it anyway. Like the air is stitched with whispers I can’t hear.

So I cut left, push open the stairwell door, and slip inside, let the door close behind me, and press my back to the wall. The metal is cold through my shirt, grounding me for a moment. My chest still won’t slow.

I want to believe it’s over for now. That Caleb’s retreat means I can go home, lock the door, and drown in my own silence. But I know better. He’ll circle back. He always does.

And worse—Elias will know.

I can feel it in my bones, the way some people feel storms coming. He’ll hear, or Lydia will tell him, or maybe he already knows. He’ll come for me, not with questions but with decisions already made.

And some parts of me twist in two. I don’t know if I want him to or not.

The stairwell feels too tight, too stale. I shove the crash bar on the exit door, and it swings outward, spilling me into daylight.

The street is calm. Too calm. A delivery truck idles at the corner, and the sun glints off the windshield of a parked Civic across the road. Nothing unusual. Nothing threatening.

Except my gut won’t let it go. I scan the sidewalks, the windows above, the stillness that feels staged. I don’t see him. Not yet.

But the weight of his presence is already there, threaded through the air I pull into my lungs.

Caleb is the threat I can name; Elias is the storm I keep walking into anyway.