- DECLAN
The water was warm enough to fool the body.
That was the point of it.
The only thing keeping me grounded was the rhythmic pain in my shoulders as I forced my body through some slow laps in the silence of my private pool.
I felt like I was trying to outrun a ghost with every stroke, the ghost of that hotel night. I had intended to destroy her to pay off a blood debt with her father, but instead, I’d just ended up haunted by the look of her sleeping, innocent face before I walked out and left her to a wolf like Aiden Griffiths.
I hadn’t just looked at her that night; I had memorized her like a map I was planning to burn. Even now, through the steam of the pool, I could still see the way her dark brown hair had spilled across the white hotel pillows—thick, wavy, and smelling of
