تسجيل الدخولBella’s POVThe footsteps stopped just outside the door.My aunt straightened fast, all the fragile openness from a moment ago folding back behind a mask of practiced calm, and for one terrible second I thought she’d already made her choice, that whatever door had cracked open between us had simply closed again for good. My own heart hammered against my ribs, the iron at my wrists feeling heavier now than it had all night, a physical reminder of exactly how little control I still had over what happened next.The door swung open, and instead of enforcers, instead of whoever her employers had sent to collect their prize, Ronan stood in the frame, breathless, blood still crusted along one temple from the fight at the tournament grounds.My aunt’s hand moved fast, reaching for something at her belt, and Ronan’s hands came up immediately, empty, non-threatening.“Wait.” His voice carried none of the arrogance I remembered from before, only urgency. “I’m not here to fight you. I’m here beca
Bella’s POVThe door didn’t lock from the inside. That was the first thing I noticed once I’d stopped shaking long enough to actually think.Whoever had built this place had built it to keep things in, not to keep them comfortable, and comfort had apparently never extended to something as basic as an interior bolt. I tested the iron at my wrists again, twisting slow, feeling for any give in the metal, and found none. Whatever had been used to forge these restraints, it hadn’t been designed by someone careless.I forced myself to think past the fear instead of drowning in it. Panic wouldn’t get me out of this room. Only patience would, and patience had never been something Ronan’s father’s cruelty managed to fully break out of me, no matter how hard he’d tried across four years of trying. If anything, every cruelty he’d ever inflicted had only sharpened whatever stubborn core of me refused to simply give up when things looked hopeless.The lantern in the corner had burned low making lo
Draven’s POVThor found the abandoned vehicle forty minutes after her radio went silent.There was nothing. No blood, which should have made me feel better. It did not. This was because it looked like whoever took her wanted her alive and without any marks. They wanted to take her specific not just leave her on the side of the road. I stood by the car door for a long time trying to breathe normally trying not to think about all the bad things that could happen tonight."Tracks go north " Thor said. He was squatting by the trees looking at the marks on the ground carefully. He was trying not to think about anything until we found her. "There are two sets of tracks. One is heavier than the other. The person carrying her was not having trouble with her weight.""This means they are very strong " I said, trying to keep my voice calm. I was holding the flashlight tightly trying not to punch the tree. I was very upset. "Stronger, than an enforcer should be."“Or they weren’t carrying her th
Bella’s POVI woke to the smell of woodsmoke and old stone.My wrists were bound in front of me not with rope but with something metal that hummed faintly against my skin in a way that made the pressure behind my ribs feel muffled, distant like someone had thrown a blanket over a fire I needed to breathe. My whole body still carried the borrowed exhaustion of whatever drug she’d used against me in the vehicle thoughts arriving slow and unwieldy like wading through water instead of thinking clearly.“That’s wolfsbane-forged iron " the woman said, from across the room. "It won’t hurt you. It just makes the shift harder to reach. A precaution, not a punishment.”I forced my eyes to focus. Stone walls, old and rounded a lantern burning low in one corner no windows anywhere I could see. Wherever we were it had been built to hold things and to keep them from being found.“Where am I.”“Somewhere safe." She said it without irony, which somehow made it worse. "Somewhere they can’t reach you u
Bella’s POVThe radio went dead before Thor could say anything else, static swallowing his voice whole, and I sat frozen for one full second, staring at the man beside me who wore Gordon’s face like it belonged to him.My mind went back to everything he said since we left the hallway. I thought about all the things that seemed normal and safe. I was trying to find the moment when he was not himself anymore. I just did not notice.Then his hands changed. They changed fast. The fingers on the steering wheel got longer. The skin looked different. The whole thing that looked like Gordon was. I saw someone I did not know. It was a woman with features and cold eyes."You should have looked at my hands closer " she said. Her voice was not like Gordons voice all. It was smooth and calm even though everything was crazy. "Faces are easy to fake. Hands are what give people away if you know what to look for " she said.I tried to open the door. She was too fast. She let go of the wheel with one h
Bella’s POV“We need to move. Now.”Draven was already pulling me upright before I’d fully processed what Ronan’s father had just said, his grip firm around my arm, urgency radiating off him in a way that cut straight through my own creeping shock.My legs still hadn’t fully recovered from the shift, and I stumbled once before finding my footing, Draven’s hand steadying me without either of us breaking stride.“Collect me.” My voice came out thinner than I wanted it to.“He said collect me. Like I’m cargo.”I thought about the way Ronan’s father had said it, the strange, hollowed-out certainty in his voice even as whatever had been taken from him left him barely able to string a full sentence together. Whoever had done that to him hadn’t bothered lying about what came next. That honesty scared me more than a threat would have.“I heard him.” Draven’s jaw had gone tight, every line of him coiled toward action. “Which means whoever’s behind this isn’t finished with today. The presentatio
Draven’s POVI dragged my jacket on, the stitches pulling with every move. I felt a few tear open but I ignored it, striding towards the door.Thor was waiting outside with the look he got when he had already decided something was a bad idea and had also already accepted that it was going to happen
Bella's POV I have waited patiently for days, waiting for Draven to come and visit me as he promised, but I haven't seen him since then. I was too curious to know the reason he would rather not fulfill his promise. “Today has been the fourth day since I last saw Draven. He promised that he would c
Bella's POV I slowly opened my eyes. I couldn't see the environment clearly because I was just waking up; I needed to get myself first. As I turned and faced up, at first it was blurred from my view, but as I gently opened my eyes, well, it was as if magic happened. “What's good here?” I muttered
Draven's POV:“Were you not informed by Thor how busy I am today?” I asked immediately as she walked inside my study room.I sat behind the table, a book swapped on it. My hands kept scanning a particular paper, looking for a particular information but I got distracted now that Clara was standing i







