The sandstorm howled outside, a beast clawing at the walls of the fortress, but its fury was a pale imitation of the storm raging inside me. Kaelen’s confession echoed in the blood-soaked silence between us, not a whisper of intimacy but the cold, hard clang of a cage door slamming shut.
“Drag me down?” I repeated, my voice dangerously low, stripped of the tremor that had plagued me moments before. The shock had burned away, leaving behind something clean and hard and lethal. “You think you have that right?”
He took a step toward me, his immense frame blocking out the harsh surgical lights, casting me in his shadow. The predator was done watching from a distance; he was closing in. “I have every right. I listened to you break, night after night. I held the pieces together through a thous
