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“I don’t want to see her.”
Chris waited. He stood close enough to feel her breathing.
“Sloane…”
She shook her head. “She’s stayed with him all these years. She must be utterly brainwashed, or…”
“Or what?”
Her eyes met his. “Or just like him.”
“You don’t know that.”
When she looked up at him, her eyes were wet, the grey-blue bright in the early light. “Will you come with me?”
“Try to stop me.”
They found Lyssa in the holding area. A short girl with Garrett’s coloring, dark hair tangled, arms crossed. She looked up when Sloane walked in.
“You’re her,” Lyssa said. “He told me about you. Said you turned on him. Said the pack brainwashed you.”
Sloane pulled a chair across from her. Sat down. Chris stayed by the door. Close enough.
“He burned me with a cigarette so often, I stopped feeling it.” Flat. Undecorated. “He broke my wrist when I was five for keeping a necklace my aunt gave me. He came to this compound to take me back because he thinks I belong to him.” She held the girl’s gaze. “He thinks you belong to him too.”
Lyssa scowled, hissed, then came up against the bars. “You’re lying.”
“I know you think that.”
“He protected me. He kept us safe.”
“I know.” Sloane leaned forward. “Did he? Did he keep you safe, or did he control you? Own you?”
The girl’s mouth trembled. Her arms tightened across her chest, and she lifted her chin. “He didn’t love you,” Sloane insisted. “He saw you as property. Just like he saw me.”
“You don’t have to believe me today,” Sloane said. She stood. Chris opened the door for her. “But I’ll be here when you’re ready.”
They walked out into the morning. The compound was bright with early sun, scorch marks on the stone, repair crews already moving.
Chris took her hand. She let him.
“Do… do you think she’ll come around?”
“She will.”
“I hope you’re right, Chris. Because…”
“She has you. She’ll come around. I know she will.”
They walked through the compound together. She tightened her grip on his hand. He tightened his back. They went home.
Epilogue - Sloane
She woke up warm.
That was the first thing. Not alert, not braced, not reaching for the blade she used to keep under her pillow in the cottage at the edge of the compound. Warm. The sheets were tangled around her calves, kicked down sometime in the night, and sunlight pressed through the curtains in pale gold lines across the floor.
Chris was behind her. His arm lay heavy across her waist, his palm flat against her stomach, his breathing slow against her shoulder. She could feel his heartbeat through the skin of his chest where it pressed against her back. The bond hummed low between them, settled, unhurried, carrying nothing she needed to brace for.
