Page 54 of Obliterated
Until I feel my own breaths break apart in my chest. Until my arms won’t stop shaking, even though he’s not fighting back anymore.
Dead. I fuckingkilledhim.
When it’s over, the room breathes around me—it’s too loud, too quiet—and my hands won’t let go of the hilt. My whole body is buzzing, frantic, like it hasn’t caught up with the fact that it’s done.
Panic floods me, messy and sharp, tripping over itself. I don’t know what to do, where to put my hands, where to look.
There’s blood on me, around me, everywhere, and I can’t tell where it stops and I start.
I’m shaking. I’m shaking so fucking hard I don’t know if the sound I hear is my teeth clattering or the walls breathing with me.
The room tilts, stretches,shrinks. My hands are claws around the dagger and I can’t make them unclench.I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.
I don’t feel my fingers. I don’t feelanything.
Just buzzing. Just static.
Until…
“Started the fun without me, huh?”
Chapter thirteen
Kieran
Myheadjerkstowardthe balcony before I even mean to. My neck aches from the sudden twist, but I can’t stop staring.
He’s here. For real this time. Alive.Whole.
Something inside me cracks when I take him in. He’s leaning against the frame like it’s just another night, like the world isn’t smeared across my sheets and my skin. Arms folded, that crooked grin slicing his face, eyes glinting in the starry night.
Those dark, intense eyes are on me—only me. Not on the mess in this room, not on the body on my bed, not on the godsdamned ceiling. Only on me.
Relief punches through me so hard it almost knocks me over. Relief, then fury, then something wild I can’t name because none of it fits inside me right now. My chest heaves, my throat burns, and all I can do is clutch the dagger like it's proof I didn’t dream any of this.
My lips part. No sound comes out. My voice is gone, swallowed whole.
Max tilts his head. “Guess you don’t need me as much as I thought.”
I shake my head. Not in denial, just because I don’t know how else to make the room move, to make myself real again.
He’s in front of me in a heartbeat, closer than I thought possible, and a whole-body shudder wrecks through me as the adrenaline finally crashes down.
He’s here.
The dagger clatters to the floor. My hands fly to my face, fingers sticky, useless.
He doesn’t rush me. He just wraps both hands around my neck, thumbs gliding—slow, deliberate—over my raging pulse.
It grounds me, centers me, calms me in ways I never thought possible. The panic thins at the edges, like someone pinched the static out of the air.
“Easy now,” he murmurs, voice low. “Breathe with me.”
His thumbs keep that steady rhythm against my pulse as I comply, each stroke dragging me back into my own skin, back into the room. Inside I’m raging, spinning, a storm tearing itself apart without knowing which way is up, which way is out. My chest can’t keep pace, my thoughts crash into each other, wild and useless.
But his eyes, his eyes are calm. Like the demons Tass spoke about, that darkness swirling in the night sky is diminished. For now.
“Was that your first time taking a life?”
