Page 230 of Fractured Allegiance
Mara sets down a paper bag. “Soup,” she says. “From that place you don’t hate.”
Elias’s eyes soften in a way I’ve never seen before.
Mara looks at me then, her expression warm but edged with awareness. She set the soup on the counter. “I know you’ll survive this too.” She says, not taking her eyes off me.
The words should comfort me. Instead, they itch. Because surviving isn’t what I want anymore. I’m so tired of that being all my life is.
The table is crowded with papers, maps, Elias’s notes scrawled in black ink. Silas leans over the spread, his forearm brushing mine when he slides a file across. The touch is nothing. The kind of accidental contact you’d ignore with anyone else.
But not him.
The heat lingers against my skin, pulling my eyes to his hand. His knuckles scarred, veins ridged under pale skin. I should move back. I don’t.
His gaze lifts, catches mine. For a heartbeat, it’s just the two of us, caught in a silence slices deeper than Elias’s worst threats.
Then Mara shifts closer to Elias, her fingers tightening on his wrist as she studies one of the maps. He sets his other hand over hers without breaking stride in the conversation, like it’s instinct.
It makes something twist in my chest. Elias anchored, softened, claimed in a way I’ve never seen. Silas is nothing like him—he doesn’t bend, doesn’t ground. But the hunger in his eyes tells me he’d claim me just the same, if I let him.
Elias notices the brush of Silas’s hand against mine. His stare burns. “Careful where you put your hands, Ward.”
Silas doesn’t blink. “Maybe look at where yours already are.”
The corner of Elias’s mouth curves, but it’s humorless. Mara nudges his arm, soft but firm. Don’t. The message is clear. He exhales through his nose and looks back at the map.
I lean back in my chair, watching the two men circle each other, and for once I don’t feel like a pawn being passed between them. I feel like the piece they both underestimated.
The burner buzzes again against Silas’s hip. He ignores it this time. Doesn’t even check the screen. Just keeps his eyes on me like I’m the only signal he gives a damn about.
My pulse thunders, honed to a dangerous edge.
The room settles into an uneasy quiet, broken only by the scrape of Elias’s pen circling a block of the map. He doesn’t look at me when he speaks.
“If you both keep playing at this—” his eyes flick between Silas and me, a cold seam of threat, “Drazen won’t even have to kill you. You’ll tear each other apart first.”
I straighten in my chair. “Maybe.” My voice doesn’t waver. “But Drazen won’t decide that for me. Neither can you.”
Mara watches me, her expression unreadable, but I catch the faintest nod, almost imperceptible. Approval? Or maybe just recognition.
Elias sets the pen down, leans back in his chair, folds his arms like he’s done arguing. But the storm in his eyes says otherwise.
I push the map toward the center of the table, finger landing on Petrov Station. “That’s where we go next. That’s where this ends.”
Silas’s hand settles over mine on the paper, rough and steady. He doesn’t say a word, but the weight of it is enough.
Elias shakes his head, mutters something under his breath I don’t catch. Mara rests a hand on his arm, grounding him again.
A gust brushes the blinds, making them clatter in their frame. Dust turns slowly in the sunlight, and the silence stretches, thin and expectant.
And I make my choice in the silence.
If Drazen thinks I’m still his pawn, he’s about to learn differently.
If Silas thinks he can cage me with obsession, he’s about to learn what a razor does.
I’ll walk into Petrov Station myself if I have to. I’ll burn every file, every chain, every last piece of leverage.
Because I refuse to let anyone else write the ending for me.
