Page 66 of Scavenger's Oath

She hums again, low and soft, tired maybe.Blissfully unaware she’s gutting me with every sound.

Fuck, this was a mistake.

The shower shuts off behind me, and her voice echoes in the room. “Do you... have a towel?”

Inhaling a breath through my nose, I open one of the lockers in front of me and hold a towel and a hairbrush behind me, keeping my face toward the lockers.

Her wet feet slap across the tile toward me before she takes the towel. “Thank you—oh. Uh… it’s a handtowel.”

“It’s a towel, isn’t it?” I say, voice strained. My muscles tight from the knowledge she’s within arm’s reach. “Get dressed. Or you can go back to the cell naked.”

But I can’t erase the image of her naked body from my head. I hate her for it. I hate her for being so soft. So gentle in a world so savage.

I shouldn’t have looked.

Because even now, I’m wondering if I could touch her and still hate her.

If I could make her bend to my will and scoop out the softness to devour.

Chapter 22

Ivy

The walk back to the cell is uncomfortably quiet. Phoenix stays a few steps ahead, as if getting away from me is a priority.

I don’t want to be the one to break the silence.

Because I know what he did.

He thinks I was too lost in the luxury of running water. But I caught his movement in the showerhead reflection.

He looked at me.

Naked. Exposed. Rinsing the past month out of my hair like I could wash the memories away.

For a moment, I expected shame to follow.

But it didn’t.

What I felt instead was… power.

The idea that someone like him—all discipline and sharp edges—could lose control, even for a second… lit something inside me.

I can still feel the ghost of yesterday's tension between us, how close we got. How intensely he watched me. So hungry.

Phoenix is huge, similar to Myles. Built like he was made for war, broad and tall enough to block the whole damn hallway. I glance at his strong hands. Another similarity to Myles, black ink licking from his fingertips, all the way up his muscular arms to hisjaw like it’s trying to taste every inch of him.

But he’s so different to Myles. His neatly slicked back hair makes him look cruel and composed. As if he didn’t walk through the end of the world—he commanded it.

And that devil-sharp jaw? He looks like the kind of man who could ruin your life, and you’d still thank him. A heartbreak wrapped in temptation.

If the tattoos didn’t already mark him as dangerous, the way he carries himself would.

Maybe I’m in way over my head but… aren’t two protective men better than one? If I can pull this off, doesn’t that make me safer from Bennett and his men?

Sure, I might be playing with fire but weighing up risk vs reward… I’m ready to burn.

I want to know how it feels to be taken apart by a beast like him. Even if I don’t survive.