Chapter Thirty-Six
The chapel was silent, the heavy air still thick with the ghost of Amber’s screams and the brutal finality of Stone’s judgment. I stared at the closed oak doors, my heart still hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs, before looking up at Jake.
The cold, lethal mask he had worn for the board was still firmly in place, but the moment he felt my eyes on him, his jaw relaxed. He looked down at me, his stormy gray eyes searching my face for any lingering traces of fear. Without a word to Stone or the remaining board members, he gently guided me out of the chapel, his heavy arm protecting my side as we navigated the quiet hallway back to the stairs of his quarters.
When the heavy steel door of his room clicked shut behind us, locking out the rest of the world, the silen
