Page 25 of The Mourning Throne
Lex reached out and brushed his fingers over the back of Ollie’s hand.
“If we let you out,” he started sweetly, “you could get hit. Do you want that?”
Morgan didn’t say a word. Didn’t glance back. His hands remained steady on the wheel, the faint, rhythmic tap of the turn signal filling the void for a few heartbeats before it clicked off.
And Lex understood thatitchMorgan talked about sometimes, the one he couldn’t kick.
Because this was it.
The moment the animal realized the trap had closed.
He’d never been this close to it before. Never got to watchasit happened. It was always after.
Not once did he catch the flutter of someone’s pulse on the recordings, but he could see it now. Ollie’s looked like a bird trying to beat its wings through a window.
“No,” Ollie finally whispered.
He turned his face toward the window, trying to blink too fast, too often. He kept stealing glances at the street signs. Lex could see him mentally tracking turns, counting intersections.
Ollie wouldn’t remember them later.
Not unless he had a photographic fucking memory.
That’s when the high started to hit.
Not the giddy kind. Not the thrill of flirtation or attention. This one was darker. Greater. Something cold and nameless, slithering under the surface.
Jesus, this was so damn better thananythinghe’d ever recorded.
It wasn’t Morgan’s brand of violence—the slick, messy sound of blood splattering against leaves, the wet snap of a body folding wrong, the ragged screams tearing themselves raw in the night.
Morgan could keep the gore.
The theatrics.
The big, loud moments.
Lex had fallen in love withthis.
The way realization crept in like fog through a cracked window. Soft until it wasn’t.
The way it turned in Ollie’s eyes. That heavy, sick tilt as he understood, truly understood, that something had shifted.
That Ollie wasn’t the one calling the shots anymore.
Lex’s pulse didn’t race. His hands didn’t shake. Instead, everything stilled. Inside and out.
Because for the first time, he wasn’t watching from behind a phone. Wasn’t pretending to be invisible while Morgan did all the lifting.
For the first time, Lex wasreallyin control.
And god, it feltclean.
Chapter 5
The elevator doors hissed open. Lex barely spared a glance at the mirrored walls and heavy carpet beneath. All he cared about was what was going to happen to poor, darling Ollie.
Ollie shuffled inside first, flip-flops muffled against the carpet, like he was trying not to be heard. He kept glancing around frantically, reflection catching and blurring across the walls—pale face, wide eyes shining under the sterile lights. A deer caught in headlights. Except dumber.
