Page 99 of Fractured Devotion
She’ll come to me when she starts to doubt Harper more than me, and when the walls I’ve built around her questions feel safer than Alec’s polished truths.
I just need to make sure she sees what’s real. Or at least, what’s real enough.
Soon.
Chapter 32 – Kade - Blood Moon Logic
By the time I make it home, dawn is still hours away. My apartment is darker than usual, the lights all left off on purpose. I don’t need them. Every step is calculated, my muscle memory guiding me.
Instead of collapsing into bed like I should, I head to the far end of the living room. Pulling the false panel loose, I reveal the hidden wall cavity behind the bookshelves. The surveillance screens, fourteen of them, arranged in a grid, still lie disconnected. A protective measure.
But that measure ends tonight.
I spend the next hour rewiring and transferring the power nodes and rerouting the data lines to a more secure channel tucked away in the deepest part of my home, accessible only through a retinal trigger hidden in a mirror frame. No one will stumble onto it, not even if they come searching.
Once the screens hum back to life, I scroll through the feeds. Camera angles blink open. The primary apartment Celeste abandoned still looks untouched, her bedroom intact. The camera the intruder planted still sits unnoticed, perched in the far corner above her closet. I note the timestamp. There’s been no recent activity.
Switching to the secondary feed, I find her.
She’s asleep in her backup apartment, curled into herself with one arm pressed beneath the pillow. I wonder if she feels safer there or just more isolated.
I watch her for a moment longer than I should. Her chest rises and falls in a slow rhythm. She looks peaceful, and it’s almost cruel how easily she slips into something like rest, while my thoughts stay knotted in wire.
I kill the feed and go lie down. My own bed feels foreign. Cold.
What the hell am I doing?
My hands ache from restraint. I haven’t talked to her in days, not since that look she gave me in the corridor, like I was something she’d finally realized couldn’t be fixed. Alec was there. Always there.
Still, I’m not out. I won’t be. I just need the right moment.
Sleep comes for me eventually, but it’s not rest. It’s something murkier, like drowning in a familiar tank.
Morning sneaks in a little faster than I would like.
I follow a routine by taking a cold shower, wearing a pressed shirt, and taking silent footsteps into the belly of the clinic. I don’t make myself obvious. I let Alec think I’m slipping and let Reyes waste his hours monitoring data that only tells half the story.
Then I see her.
Celeste stands by the atrium stairwell, speaking softly to Mara and two interns I don’t recognize. Her posture is stiff and formal. But she’s listening, at least. Mara hands her a clipboard. It’s likely something technical. Her gaze flicks upward and meets mine.
One second passes. Then two.
That’s all it takes.
Her eyes hold mine with no warmth, but they’re not cold either. It’s like she doesn’t know what I am today.
I nod once, but she doesn’t return it.
Late into the night, when the clinic is nearly empty and the halls echo with the hum of emergency lighting, I’m back in my hidden terminal space, reviewing logs in silence. That’s when it hits—an alert flashing in the lower corner of my screen. An unauthorized access to the rooftop stairwell.
Feed 8C goes live.
It’s Harper.
Her body language reads like guilt that’s soaked in panic, her shoulders hunched, her arms wrapped tightly around herself.
I smile.
