Page 167 of Knot So Fast
Because this fight didn't start with him—it started with me pushing and pushing until something had to give.
When our eyes meet again, I watch his expression transform in real time.
The thrilling rage that had been burning there—the kind that makes my stomach flip and my thighs clench despite myself—begins to decipher into something else entirely. Horror. Realization. The immense weight of what he just did crashing down on him like a freight train carrying all our broken promises.
His face goes white beneath that perpetual tan, his hands dropping to his sides like someone cut his strings.
"Fuck... Aur?—"
"Don't."
The word rips from my throat, raw and desperate.
I don't wait for him to say my name.Can't. Because that's my weakness—the way it sounds on his lips, rough and desperate andmineeven when we're destroying each other.
He's my weakness.
All of them are.
His entire fucking pack, and I'm about to detonate if I stand here one more second breathing in his scent, feeling his horror wash over me in waves.
The rational part of my brain—what's left of it—screams that this is exactly what I wanted.
To push him past his breaking point.
To make him lose control the way he makes me lose everything just by existing in the same space.
But seeing the blood on my fingers when I touch my cheek, seeing the way his face crumples...
This isn't victory.
This is devastation.
And the reality is, we’ll destroy one another if one doesn’t walk away.
I’m the sacrifice.
I spin away, rushing toward the door with my heart threatening to burst from my chest. My bare feet slip slightly on the marble floor—when did I lose my shoes?—but I catch myself against the wall, leaving a bloody handprint on the pristine white paint. Everything in this house is so fucking perfect, so controlled, just like him.
Just like all of them.
My hands shake as I grab whatever set of keys I can find on the counter by the door.Of course it had to be the Ferrari.His fucking car of all choices.The universe has a sick sense of humor, giving me the keys to the most dangerous car in their collection when I'm already a live wire ready to explode.
"Auren!" He's calling after me now, his voice cracking on my name in a way that makes my chest constrict. But all I hear is pounding—the thunderous rush of blood in my ears as adrenaline kicks in like a drug mainlined straight to my nervous system. I'm fighting not to lose it. Not to lose it to the anger that lives in my bones like a second skeleton.
Not to lose it to the madness I grew up swimming in like it was the only water I'd ever known.
Dad's alcoholic yells echoing through our shitty apartment at three in the morning.
"You're worthless, just like your mother!"
Glass breaking—always glass breaking.
Mom's cries and screams that never seemed to end, that became the soundtrack to my childhood.
Little me, six years old and cornered in the closet with my hands over my ears, wishing it would all just fucking go away.
Wishing I could disappear.
