Page 29

??The Price of Freedom

Dorian

I loved watching her.

There was something about the way she moved now. Cautious at first, like she’s still waiting for the trap to spring.

But every day, her steps grew steadier. Her hands no longer shook when they brushed along the banister, her shoulders no longer flinched when I entered a room.

She was opening.

The way her eyes lingered on the small gestures, fresh flowers in the study, books I left on the windowsill with her favorite ribbon as a placeholder, a warm robe folded at the end of her bed before sunrise.

She never asked for these things.

But I watched her fingers trace the silk curtain like it was velvet spun from heaven.

I heard the little breath she took in surprise when I handed her a box of loose-leaf tea, the exact blend she mentioned once, barely above a whisper.

And I felt it, that moment when her walls dipped low enough to let me glimpse the woman beneath the fire.

She softened. For me.

And it undid something in my chest every damn time.

That’s enough.

For now.

But soon, I was going to have to show her what I was trying to keep her safe from. She got a glimpse of it when she caught me in the act, but there’s nothing like seeing it in person to really get your point across.

I had taken on a new case. The kind I usually avoided. A man named Lyle Vesterbute , a name that rolled off my tongue like it was something filthy.

He was a monster. A true predator. He’d been accused of raping and killing seventeen men and women, leaving nothing behind but broken bodies and shattered lives.

No remorse. No care. Just pure, cold evil .

I met him in an old, decrepit office building in the middle of the city, and the first thing I noticed was his eyes.

Empty.

Black. Like there’s nothing human left in him. He was a predator, yes, but not in the way most people thought.

There was something off about him, something unnatural, something wrong in the way his presence filled the room.

But I wasn’t here to analyze him. I was here to take the case.

“You’re good at what you do,” he said when I sat down across from him, his voice a low rasp that sent a shiver down my spine. “I’ve heard the rumors. The things they say about you. You get people out of trouble. You get them off the hook.”

“Yeah,” I answered, my voice calm, detached. “I do.”

“I’ll pay you well,” he added, leaning in, his eyes glinting with something dangerous. “You get me out of this. And you’ll never have to work again. You’ll have everything.”

I smiled, but it wasn’t a smile. It’s a mask. A mask I wore every time I met with clients like him. The ones who thought they could buy their way out of anything.

“You’re not the first person to try to bribe me,” I said smoothly. “But you don’t understand. I don’t need your money. What I want is to know what you really are.”

His smile faltered just for a moment. Just long enough for me to see the true darkness in his eyes. And in that moment, I knew . He wasn’t human. Not by a long shot.

I took the case, and a few, short weeks later, I did what I did best, I got him off the hook. He walked free. No one knew the horrors he’d committed. The innocent lives he had destroyed. No one except me.

I hunted Lyle for six days.

Not to learn his patterns, those were already predictable. But to savor the wait.

He moved like every man who thinks his name protects him. Expensive cars. Dinner reservations under aliases. Women who never asked too many questions.

I watched from the rooftops, from alleyways, from shadows he never noticed. Left marks he couldn’t explain. A whisper in his security feed. A dead raven on his windshield. The elevator in his building stopped two floors short every night. No explanation. No power surge. Just me.

Just a warning. I wanted him afraid, twitching, paranoid, half sure his sins were finally catching up. And when the fear started bleeding through the cracks of his confidence, I knew it was time.

She didn’t ask why. Not anymore.

She’d been quiet, watchful, wary, her eyes full of questions she wasn’t yet ready to ask. The space between us wasn’t silence, it was tension. Stretching. Waiting.

But tonight wasn’t about space. It was about truth. And she needed to see mine.

Not the man who knew how she took her coffee. Not the one who fed her pastries in a house she called a cage. Not the one who fucked her like he’s starving and she was the last breath he’d ever take.

She needed to see the other me.

The one who kept her alive.

We drove through the city in silence. Rain streaked down the windshield in thin, silvery veins. Beside me, Ember sat still, hands in her lap, fingers twitching like she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to hold on… or run.

“I’m not showing you this to scare you,” I said quietly as we turned down the final road. “I’m showing you because you need to understand what we’re up against.”

She said nothing. But I felt her looking at me. Not with fear. Not yet. With trust she didn’t want to admit was growing.

The warehouse loomed like a corpse on the edge of the city. Abandoned. Quiet. But alive in all the worst ways.

She stepped out slowly, arms wrapped around herself, eyes wide. “Where are we?”

“Where truth lives,” I murmured. “And where monsters die.”

Inside, the air shifted as the ward sealed behind us. The shadows curled along the rafters. They knew me.

And they knew why we were here.

Lyle waited in the center. Polished shoes. Gold cufflinks. Murderer’s hands.

He smiled like a man who still thought he had power. “Dorian,” he said with a nod, his voice oily. “And this must be your little whore.”

Before Ember could react, I stepped in front of her. Calm. Controlled. But already breaking apart inside.

“You’ll speak her name with respect,” I said, my voice like ice cracking under pressure.

He laughed, and that was all it took. I lunged, inhuman speed, inhuman strength. My hand closed around his throat and lifted him off the floor like he was weightless.

Ember gasped behind me. I didn’t turn.

Not yet.

Lyle’s eyes bulged. He clawed at my wrist. My fangs slipped free, just a taste of what I was beneath the human skin.

“You raped a girl and walked free because your father knows a senator,” I growled, my voice rough and low. “You smiled while she cried in court.”

He gurgled.

“I smiled while I won your case,” I snarled. “But this is the part where justice stops pretending to wear a robe.”

I slammed him into the wall. Hard. Once. Twice. His skull cracked on impact. When he slumped, dazed, bloodied, I dropped him at Ember’s feet.

She didn’t move. Just stared at the mess of him, breathing hard, her eyes wide, not afraid of me. But afraid of what she now knew was real.

I finally turned to face her, the scent of blood thick in the air.

“You think this world will be kind if you run,” I said softly, stepping closer. “But it won’t. The people out there, the ones like him, they don’t stop. They hunt. They ruin. And the only thing that keeps them from your door… is me.”

She swallowed hard, her voice a fragile whisper. “I’m not like you.”

“You’re not,” I said gently. “That’s why I’ll never stop protecting you.”

I reached for her hand, not to pull or demand, but to offer. She didn’t flinch. She let me take it.

“You said you’d let me leave,” she murmured, not quite a question.

I nodded. “I will. I meant it.” Then, lower, only for her, “But I’ll follow you. Not to chase. To make sure no one else does.”

Her eyes flickered, glassy and unsure. And I stepped in closer.

“I don’t want to cage you, Ember.” I lifted her hand to my lips, kissing her knuckles softly, reverently. “I want you to choose to stay.”

Her breath shuddered.

Behind us, Lyle groaned, barely conscious.

I didn’t even glance at him.

“You’re safe with me,” I whispered, brushing a strand of hair from her cheek. “But safety comes with a cost.”

“What kind of cost?” she breathed.

“Trust,” I murmured. “And a little bit of faith that the monster beside you is better than the ones outside.”

She looked up at me, trembling. Torn.

But she didn’t pull away.

And in that moment, I knew I still had hope.