Page 133 of Mason

The man who should’ve run the second he saw the wreckage of me.

But he’s here.

He’s still here.

And I don’t understand it.

Why would someone like him stay? Why would a man carved from iron and vengeance stand vigil over a woman who’s more ruin than redemption?

What does a man like Mason Ironside want with a shattered thing like me?

And when he finally turns around—when those storm-colored eyes find mine and the air between us thickens like smoke—I think I see the answer.

He doesn’t want me because I’m whole.

He wants me because I survived.

Even if I don’t know how to live anymore.

A dull,gnawing ache blooms somewhere beneath my ribs, radiating outward until even my skin feels sore. Everything hurts in that quiet, thudding way that means you’re alive but barely. My mouth is dry, my throat scratched raw like I’ve been screaming for days and no one answered.

I blink.

The ceiling above me is a sterile white, fractured only by shadow. The hum of machines surrounds me—beeps, whirs, the steady rhythm of something that must be keeping me tethered to this world.

My attention is drawn back to Mason.

He’s pacing by the window, all fury and tension packed into six feet of violence wrapped in black. Mason Ironside. I knowthat shape even with my eyes half-shut. Broad shoulders pulled tight, jaw clenched like he’s holding the world between his teeth and daring it to snap.

“I don’t give a fuck about your excuses. Find them.”

His voice cracks through the stillness like a whip. Cold. Sharp. Lethal.

I don’t hear the response on the other end of the line. But I don’t need to, because his silence says enough. A different kind of danger lingers in the air now—quieter, but heavier.

“I don’t care what it costs. I want them dead.”

A shiver crawls up my spine.

Not because I’m afraid of him. I’ll never be afraid of him.

But because I know why he’s saying it.

Because I almost died.

Because of me.

I swallow, my throat rasping in protest, and somehow that soft, involuntary sound slices through his anger like a drumbeat.

He goes still.

I watch him lower the phone slowly, his fingers curled around it like he wants to crush it to pieces. His head turns—and when his eyes land on mine, everything in the room shifts. Tilts. Breaks.

Mason stares at me like I’ve been resurrected.

And maybe I have.

His chest rises and falls like he’s struggling to breathe, but he crosses the room with slow, deliberate steps, dragging his shadow with him.

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