Page 5 of Stalked & Bred by the BRATVA
Halfway to the guest rooms, I hear it, a shift in the air. Not a sound exactly, but a presence. My skin prickles. I slow. There’s someone ahead.
He’s standing at the far end of the hallway, half in shadow where the light from the wall sconces fades. Tall, broad-shouldered, dressed in a dark suit that fits like it was made for him. He’s not moving. Not speaking. Just watching.
My grip on the towels tightens.
I can’t see his face clearly, only the suggestion of it. Pale against the darkness, features unreadable from this distance. I know I should keep walking, pretend I didn’t notice him, but my feet feel rooted to the floor.
Something about him makes the air feel heavy.
And then, without a word, he turns and disappears around the corner.
I blink, realizing I’ve been holding my breath. My chest aches as I force the air out, my heart hammering in my ribs. I tell myself he was just another guest or one of the brothers I haven’t met yet. This is their home, after all. People come and go.
But it didn’t feel like that. It felt deliberate.
Like he’d been waiting for me to see him before leaving.
I start walking again, faster now, the towels held so tightly my arms ache. By the time I reach the guest room, my hands are damp with sweat. I place the towels neatly on the bed, smoothing the top one even though it doesn’t need it, and glance out the window toward the gardens.
The sun has fully risen now, gilding the edges of the fountain. The world looks normal. Ordinary and safe. But I know better.
Someone’s watching me. Following me. Leaving me gifts.
And now, I think I’ve seen him.
Mikhail
She freezes when she sees me.
I don’t move. I don’t speak. I just stand at the end of the corridor and let her look. It’s the first time I’ve given her the chance. Until now, I’ve been nothing but a shadow in her periphery, a shift in the air she can’t quite name.
But she needs more than that.
She needs to feel my eyes on her and know, even if she won’t admit it yet, that they belong there.
She’s clutching the towels like they’re armour. Her knuckles are white against the fabric. Her eyes are wide, wary, but not in the way prey looks at a predator right before it bolts. There’s something else there, buried beneath the fear. A flicker of something she doesn’t want to name.
I wait.
She doesn’t move.
The light catches the curve of her cheek, the pale skin of her throat. I imagine my hand there, feeling the jump of her pulse beneath my thumb. I imagine the way she would look if I walked toward her now, slow and certain, until there was nowhere for her to go but back against the wall.
Not yet.
I let her see me. Let her mind twist itself in knots trying to figure out who I am and what I want. Then I turn and disappear around the corner, my stride unhurried.
She’ll come after me in her mind, even if her feet stay rooted. She’ll replay it over and over, the stillness, the silence, the way I didn’t break eye contact until I chose to.
I make my way to the study, where the monitors are already waiting. The hallway camera shows her standing there for several seconds before she moves again, her steps quicker than before. She keeps her head down the rest of the way, but I can tell from the tilt of her shoulders that she’s thinking about me.
That’s the point.
The gifts are one thing. The perfume moved just so. The nightgown. The flower. They make her question herself. But seeing me, knowing there’s a man behind it, will make her question everything else.
Her brother sent her here to be punished. To be broken. He didn’t understand what kind of men live in this house. We don’t break what’s ours.
We keep it. We protect it. We claim it. And Sarah is mine.
