He leans closer, mouth near my ear, breath warm and maddening. “Rafe doesn't kill. He dismantles. He takes you apart so slowly you don’t know which scream was the first. And if he thinks someone took something from his, he’ll make sure they never remember how it felt to be whole.”
My stomach flips. My thighs flex against the restraints, but I’m not going anywhere. “You think this is punishment?” I hiss.
He smiles faintly. “No, Julian. This is protection.”
Kai moves like a shadow with a purpose—smooth, deliberate, every motion clean and economical as he turns his back to me and walks to the steel counter. I can’t lift my head very far with the restraints locking my shoulders down, but I can still track him from the corner of my eye as he opens a locked drawer and pulls out a vial filled with clear, viscous fluid.
It doesn’t look like the milky sedatives he sometimes uses, and it isn’t yellow like most of the uppers I’ve begged for.
This is something else.
Something I don’t recognize.
He draws the liquid into a syringe without saying a word, flicks the air bubble free with two practiced taps, and then turns back toward me with the quiet calm of a man preparing a body for autopsy.
My pulse kicks up instantly. "What’s that?" I rasp, throat dry. My voice cracks. Not from fear, exactly. Just… something lower than that. I know it’s not what I want. I know it’s not drugs. I’ve begged enough to recognize the rhythm when it’s off.
And Kai didn’t restrain me just to give me drugs.
No.
This is something else.
He doesn’t answer at first.
He just walks back to my side, smooth and silent in those soft-soled shoes, every movement controlled, deliberate, inevitable. Then his hand curls gently around my jaw, his thumb tilting my chin upward until my throat is fully exposed.
“We’re going to play a little game,” he murmurs, his tone almost amused—almost sweet.
His fingers brush my throat once.
“Since you want it to hurt so bad.”
And before I can fight him, before I can ask another question, before I can even pull in a full breath—
He slides the needle into my neck.
It burns instantly, a sharp, cold precision that slices straight into my bloodstream.
“Fuck—!” I hiss, jerking hard against the straps. “What the fuck did you—”
He steps back calmly and tosses the empty syringe into the tray like he just watered a plant.
“Relax,” he says.
The word makes me twitch again, because nothing about this feels relaxing.
I blink hard as something starts spreading through my body—not a high, not a sedative, but a strange electrical tingling that crawls under my skin like someone just plugged me into a wall and whisperedconfess.
“Kai—” I growl, but even as I say it my tongue feels hot, my chest too tight, my thoughts too loud.
He walks slowly to the foot of the table and then up along the side, his fingers dragging lightly across the restraints—not touching me, just the leather, just reminding me they’re there.
“Let’s see what you’rereally afraid of, shall we?” he says softly.
And my mouth—my traitorous fucking mouth—already wants to open. Already wants to tell him.
Oh fuck.
