Page 97 of Mystic's Sunrise

“Nah. This is the part where you get back in your car and get the fuck out of here before I make you.”

Mystic’s wife narrowed her eyes. Then, without another word, she turned on her heel, got back into her car, and sped off into the night.

Lucy exhaled sharply, watching her go before she turned back to me, arms crossed. “Come on. Let’s get you back before you do something stupid.”

I hesitated and, slowly—I nodded.

I was numb now. The same kind of numb that took after I was taken and realized I had no escape from the horror that would be my life.

CHAPTER SIXTY

I GRIPPED THEwheel so tight my nails bit intothe leather, my knuckles pale against the dark interior. The road stretched ahead—empty, endless—but I wasn’t really seeing it. My eyes were locked forward, but my mind was still back at the clubhouse, trapped in that suffocating room where I’d never belonged, not truly. Not in their eyes.

Adly and Calder had always made sure I knew it. Their disgust wasn’t something they bothered to hide, and their tolerance thinned a little more each time I showed up. To them, I was a problem, an intrusion—just something to be pushed out of Kain’s life, a lingering shadow they were desperate to erase.

But they were wrong.

Kain wasn’t theirs to protect. He wasn’t theirs to fix. And he sure as hell wasn’t theirs to keep.

He was mine.

I slammed my foot on the gas, the engine roaring beneath me like it echoed the fury building in my chest. But even that raw mechanical snarl couldn’t drown out the sound of his voice—cold and distant in my head—or the memory of how easily he cast me aside. His rejection wasn’t just a slap; it was a betrayal, deliberate and cruel.

They all saw me as manipulative, as this controlling, venomous woman who never deserved him. But I was the one who stood by him. When Kain came back from the war broken and hollow, it wasn’t Adly or Calder picking up the shattered pieces. It wasn’t some sweet little girl with sad eyes and a soft voice helping him breathe through his nightmares.

It was me.

I was with him when he couldn’t sleep, when he woke screaming and sweating and clutching at nothing. I was there when the rage spiraled out of control. I saw the blood on his knuckles when he lost the fight to whatever lived inside his head. I was the only one who stayed when things got ugly—and things always got ugly.

Not her.

Not that fragile little thing he was wasting his time on now.

I’d seen the way he looked at her. That stupid softness in his eyes that used to be mine. I felt it the second he changed, the exact moment his obsession with her eclipsed everything else. And that’s what it was. Obsession. It wasn’t love. Couldn’t be.

My pulse thudded violently in my ears as my thoughts spiraled faster than the tires beneath me. She had nothing real to offer him—nothing but weakness and trembling hands—and yet he looked at her like she was made of light, like she could save him from everything that still crawled through his soul.

It made me sick.

I should’ve intervened the moment I felt the shift, should’ve shut it down before it ever started. But I didn’t even know about her until last night. My little spy, so eager to please, somehow failed to mention the girl everyone suddenly seemed to think was good enough for him. Either they were playing games with me, or someone had grown careless—and I didn’t take well to either.

Adly and Calder were probably celebrating already, thinking they’d finally won, that they’d managed to push me aside. I could imagine them whispering behind my back, painting me like I was toxic, something Kain needed to be cleansed of.

That’s what they wanted—for me to be discarded and forgotten.

Like I hadn’t shared a life with him. Like I wasn’t the one who had been by his side since we were kids. Like I wasn’t hisfucking wife.

A sharp breath tore from my throat as fury and panic warred for control. I knew Kain. I knew his triggers, his scars, his pain. I knew how to guide him through the dark. If I let them take him away from me—if I stood back and let them rewrite his story without me—then what the hell had all of this been for? What had I endured for?

I pressed even harder on the gas, my fingers curling tighter around the wheel. The car swerved a little too close to a semi. The horn blared, a violent burst of sound that barely registered. Let them honk. Let the whole damn world scream. I didn’t care anymore.

I wasn’t going to disappear. I wasn’t going to fade into silence while that pathetic little bitch played house with the man I’d built from the ground up. He might not remember it now—might not want to—but I did. Every bruise, every broken night, every time I held him together with my bare hands.

He could erase me from his life, but it wouldn’t make me vanish.

My chest tightened further, rage licking at the edge of my vision until the road blurred, the air inside the car hot and heavy like I was driving through fire. My skin itched with fury. My heart pounded like it might explode.

Then the memory hit.