LENA
There was too much silence.
Not the silence of peace, but the kind that stretches into a vacuum—unnatural, uneasy. The kind that follows violence. A silence that listens, as if the walls themselves were holding their breath.
I floated in it, somewhere between waking and gone. I knew I should be dead. My body was broken. My blood had painted the stone. My will had frayed until it snapped like a wire pulled too tight.
But the bond held.
That fragile, flickering thread I thought I'd lost—it had returned. Faint, then pulsing. Then singing through my chest like light cracking through storm clouds.
Dom.
His name echoed in the hollow of my mind like a promise.
I didn't know how long I'd been unconscious. Time had unraveled here. The sun didn't reach the compound's stone halls, and Marcus had enjoyed keeping me in the dark—in every sense of the word. He fed me lies with his hands around my throat and poisoned his touch with words meant to break me.
But he hadn't.
