“The Last Time She Bled Alone”

> From the final hours of the previous book — Uncertain Future

ARTHUR

It wasn’t the blood that made me panic.

It was the silence.

Sara wasn’t supposed to be quiet. She screamed when she was angry. She taunted her enemies even when the odds were against her. She cursed the skies just for being too gray.

But now she lay there barely breathing her hand twitching beside her abdomen, where Elias had driven the blade.

The lab was in ruins. Console screens flickered. The air reeked of ozone and burnt plastic. But all i could hear was my heartbeat. And hers is slowing.

Too slow.

I dropped to my knees, lifted her with trembling arms, and said nothing.

No begging.

No crying.

I was past that.

She was in a coma for two weeks.

In the sterile white of the off-grid medical facility, I didn't leave. Not once. Not to sleep. Not to eat. I sat beside her, one hand gripping hers, the other clutching the bloodied blade i pulled from her gut.

I replayed it every night. The sound her body made when she hit the floor. There is so much blood pooling around her.

And the part that broke me...

I hadn’t stopped it.

I hadn’t seen it coming.

I had failed her.

The doctors said she might never wake up.

Her neural responses were slow. Her vitals are weak.

I didn’t care. I whispered to her, every night.

> “Come back, Sara.”

> “Let me show you what love looks like when there’s no rules left.”

> “I’ll destroy anyone who touches you again.”

> “Even myself.

---

She woke on the fifteenth day.

Her voice was hoarse. Her eyes are empty.

“Arthur…?”

I dropped the blade. My heart exploded in my chest.

“I’m here.”

“I saw you,” she whispered. “You were holding me.”

“You almost died.”

“I wanted to.”

I froze.

“I wanted to die,” she whispered again. “But your voice kept pulling me back.”

---

That night, for the first time, she cried in my arms. Not from pain but from clarity. From finally realizing that this world would never be safe, never be kind. That love like ours didn’t survive out there , it had to devour everything else or be devoured itself.

And i ?

I finally stopped holding back.

I kissed her like a man possessed.

I wrapped my arms around her like she’d disappear again if i let go.

And from that moment on we were no longer just Sara and Arthur.

We were each other’s weapons. Each other’s addiction. Each other’s hell ... and only home.

> This was the start of the madness.

Not the fire.

Not the lab.

Not the ritual.

Just two broken souls…

…realizing nothing could fix them.

So we stopped trying.

>“Where It Began”

The lights were dim in her recovery room.

Machines blinked quietly, monitors tracking her vitals with robotic indifference. Sara sat up slowly, IV lines snaking from her arms, her body still weak from the damage. The scar on her stomach was fresh a cruel reminder of Elias’s hatred.

I sat across from her, a tray of untouched food on the table beside me . My eyes hadn’t left her in hours.

She broke the silence.

“You should hate me.”

I tilted my head, silent.

“Because I trusted him,” she continued. “Because I let him in. Because I made you watch me bleed out on a floor I swore I’d never collapse on.”

I stood slowly. Walked to her bedside.

“You think that’s why I stayed?”

She couldn’t meet my eyes. “Why did you, then?”

I leaned in. My voice was low, but sharp.

“Because I saw the truth.”

“When you were lying in your own blood… you didn’t beg for help. You didn’t cry. You looked right at me and smiled. Like you already knew how this ends.”

Sara finally looked up and she hated how much she wanted what she saw in my eyes.

Obsession.

Devotion.

Madness.

“Do you want to know what I felt, Sara?” I whispered.

She nodded.

I reached out. Pressed two fingers gently against the bandage on her stomach. She flinched but didn’t stop me .

“I wanted to hurt him,” I said. “Yes. But more than that — I wanted to claim you.”

“Not to protect you. To own you. So no one could ever touch you like that again.”

She sucked in a shaky breath. “Arthur…”

I leaned closer. Mouth inches from hers. Not kissing her. Just breathing the same air.

“I don’t want you to be safe, Sara. I want you to be mine.”

“Not the version of you that smiles in public or plays nice with allies. I want this version. The broken one. The angry one. The one that doesn’t flinch when the world turns cruel because she already knew it would.”

Something in her cracked.

“And what if I’m already too far gone?” she asked, voice shaking.

I smiled cruel and soft. “Then let me go with you.”

She didn’t say yes.

She just reached up and took my hand , pressed it hard against her healing wound.

She winced. Tears welled.

But she didn’t let go.

And neither did I.

“You’re not healing,” I whispered. “You’re transforming.”

She nodded.

“Then transform me too,” she whispered.

That night, I didn’t make love to her.

I reclaimed her. With every touch, every kiss, every controlled edge of pain i rebuilt her from the inside out. Not softer. Not safer.

But sharper. Addicted. Awake.

And Sara, for the first time since the knife went in, felt alive.

Sara didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. Just stared at me.

Then, a whisper:

“Do it. Break me.”

My lips are barely curved. Approval.

I leaned in close, breath on her cheek, the scent of smoke and leather and blood still faint on him.

“Not here. You heal first. Then I take what’s left… and turn it into something no one can ever hurt again.”

She nodded.

No tears.

No regret.

Just a quiet agreement is one more disturbing than any scream.

And in that cold, clinical hospital room, the patient didn’t recover.

She reloaded.

> This was the first ritual.

Not with chains.

Not with blood.

But with pain.

ours.

Together.

"And I Let You In"

The hospital lights buzzed softly.

Sara sat up slowly, IV still in her arm, chest heavy from everything she didn’t say. The room smelled of antiseptic and emptiness. Outside the window, the world kept turning.

But hers had stopped.

I stood near the doorway, quiet. Watching. Always watching.

“He’s dead,” she said, voice low. “Elias.”

I didn't nod. Didn’t flinch.

She already knew what that meant.

“You killed him,” she whispered, eyes locked on mine. “Did you do it for me?”

I crossed the room in silence, stopping at the edge of her bed.

“No,” he said. “I did it because he was in the way. Because he saw something in you I didn’t want anyone else touching.”

She looked away but not out of shame.

Out of recognition.

That dark, aching truth inside her chest responded to him like a second heartbeat.

“Everyone keeps trying to fix me,” she murmured. “To bring back the girl I was.”

I knelt down, eye-level now “I don’t want her.”

My hands brushed her wrist, not tender, not possessive claiming her with a touch so soft it felt louder than a scream.

“I want the version of you that survived,” I said. “The one who saw love die, and still crawled out of that fire. That version? She belongs to me.”

Her breath hitched.

Not in fear. But something more dangerous.

“Then make me yours,” she said, voice trembling not from weakness, but anticipation. “Not halfway. Not broken. Just… yours.”

My fingers trailed up to her jaw, slow, reverent , as if she were something fragile but not innocent “Say it again,” I said.

She leaned in “Make me yours.”

My lips met hers.

There was no rush. No violence. Just two people collapsing into each other two storms finding home inside the same ruin.

And in that sterile hospital room, something beautiful and sick was born.

Not vengeance.

Not healing.

But a bond that would never be clean again.

"The House That Doesn’t Heal"

The car ride was silent.

The city blurred outside the window, neon lights flickering across Sara’s face like ghosts trying to follow her.

But none of them got in the car.

Only I did.

I drove with one hand on the wheel, the other resting palm-up between us.

She didn’t take it.

Not yet.

When we reached the house, it wasn’t what she expected.

It wasn’t a lair.

It wasn’t a fortress.

It was a house meant for one person who stopped pretending he needed anyone else. Sterile kitchen. Empty living room. A record player gathering dust in the corner.

She stepped in, barefoot, hospital bracelet still clinging to her wrist.

I closed the door behind her.

No locks clicked.

“This is where you disappear,” I said quietly. “No one looks for you here.”

Sara ran her fingers along the edge of the kitchen counter. Cold. Smooth. “And what if I want to be found?”

I stepped behind her “Then you chose the wrong man.”

She turned slowly.

My eyes were already on her.

Not soft.

Not cruel.

Just real like I wasn't seeing her as broken anymore. But as something I could finally touch without breaking it further.

“I didn’t choose you to be rescued,” she whispered. “I chose you because you never looked away from the mess.”

I stepped closer.

" I wanted to stain you with it,” she admitted. “But you… you wanted to bathe in it.”

Our breath mingled.

No declarations.

Just the weight of two souls too raw to pretend anymore.

I raised a hand, brushed a thumb across her lower lip.

“Are you sure?” I asked, voice low. “Because once I let you in here…”

My hand pressed against my own chest.

“…you don’t get to walk out untouched.”

Sara leaned forward, forehead resting against mine.

Her answer

"His Shirt, His Silence"

SARA

I woke up to the sound of rain against the window.

Not the chaotic kind.

The slow, deliberate kind that made the world feel hushed and heavy.

I was alone in the bed but not abandoned. His scent lingered on the pillow. His shirt hung off my frame, too big, the sleeves swallowing my hands.

It smelled like him.

Steel. Ink. Smoke.

And something deeper, like old grief folded into cotton.

I sat up slowly.

The sheets were cold where he had once laid. The room wasn’t decorated. No family photos. No clutter. Just books stacked high and un- alphabetical. Margins filled with angry notes, underlines, and circles.

I pulled one down.

The Myth of Duality.

Inside, a line was scrawled in his handwriting:

> “We don’t split. We devour each other until the ‘I’ disappears.”

My fingers trembled but not from fear.

From recognition.

The hallway outside was quiet. I padded barefoot down the wooden floor, trailing fingers along the walls. No pictures. Just one mirror.

I stopped.

I looked at myself.

Arthur’s shirt hung off one shoulder. Hair wild. Eyes unreadable. There was a line across my neck where an old scar peeked through the collar.

But i didn’t look like prey anymore.

I looked like I chose this.

And that was more terrifying than anything.

A sound.

In the study, Arthur sat in a chair by the window, reading.

He didn’t look up when i entered. Just turned a page.

“You got out of bed,” he said.

“It stopped feeling like a cage,” i replied.

He closed the book softly, eyes lifting “That’s what love is, isn’t it?” he said. “Choosing the cage until it no longer holds you. Until it just becomes... you.”

I stepped toward him. Slow. Steady.

“Is this your love?” i asked. “This quiet... this madness?”

He took my hand, kissed my wrist where the IV mark had faded.

> “No,” he said. “This is ours.”

And at that moment, i didn’t run.

I didn’t speak.

I simply climbed into his lap, curled into his silence, and let his arms wrap around me like something earned, not given.

We didn't kiss.

We didn’t touch more than that.

But something in the room cracked open.

Not hope.

Not peace.

Just the soft sound of two people falling deeper into the abyss and deciding, together, to never climb out.

"The First Time I Saw You"

The rain had stopped.

Outside the window, the sky was a bruised violet, smeared with clouds that never quite broke.

I lay curled against Arthur’s chest on the leather armchair, his heartbeat steady beneath my cheek. His shirt still clung to me like a second skin. I didn’t speak.

I didn’t have to.

His fingers traced idle lines down my back soft, calculated, as if memorizing my spine.

“There’s something I never told you,” he said, voice almost too quiet. “About the first time I saw you.”

I tilted my head just slightly, listening.

“It wasn’t when you joined the network,” he said. “Not when you started building your name. It was before all that.”

My breath caught.

" You were seventeen,” he continued. “In a school uniform, typing like you were tearing the world open one keystroke at a time. You weren’t even in the system yet. Not officially. But I saw you hack into the local surveillance grid for fun. No reason. Just to feel something.”

My throat tightened.

I remembered that day.

How angry I had been. How empty.

“You didn’t notice the security loop stutter,” Arthur said. “But I did.”

He paused “I sat there for an hour, watching you on repeat. Back and forth. That same thirty-second clip. You biting your lip. Your hand twitching. The way you looked up, then looked away as if even eye contact with the camera felt too real.”

I slowly sat up, eyes fixed on him now.

He didn’t look ashamed.

He looked relieved “I knew then,” he whispered. “You’d never belong to their world. And I promised myself no matter what it took, I’d make sure you didn’t disappear into theirs.”

“So you watched me?” I said, voice calm but low. “All those years?”

He nodded once “More than watched. I moved pieces. Buried trails. I made sure no one else saw what I did. Not the way I did.”

“And when we met."

Arthur’s jaw tensed slightly.

“That wasn’t fate. That was me. Pulling the strings. Waiting for you to fall just far enough… that when I offered my hand, you wouldn’t question why it was already there.”

The room fell silent.

I didn’t cry.

I didn’t recoil.

I just… stared at him. At the man who had followed me through the shadows and bled my obsession like it was devotion.

Then I leaned in. Whispered against his lips “You built the trap."

He nodded “And you walked into it,” he murmured.

My fingers tangled into his hair “No,” she said. “I chose it.”

Then our mouths met slow, consuming, inevitable.

Not passion.

Not lust.

But the sealing of a pact written long before either of them said a word.

The Girl I Buried"

The mirror doesn’t lie.

It just shows what I’ve been too afraid to say out loud.

I stare at her....the girl wearing his shirt, the one with bare feet and darker eyes.

She looks like me, but not quite.

No innocence left in the corners.

No softness where there used to be light.

She isn’t broken.

She’s quietly dangerous now.

I ran my fingers across the curve of my throat, where his mouth had lingered the night before not violently, not greedily.

Ritualistically.

And I realize something terrifying:

I don’t miss who I was.

I don’t mourn her.

I buried her.

She died in that hospital bed.

She died the moment I looked at Arthur and said, “Make me yours.”

And in her place… I was born again.

Not as a soldier.

Not as a pawn.

But as his echo.

As his match.

As the only person in this world twisted enough to understand the language his silence speaks.

I walk back into the room where he waits legs crossed, coffee half-drunk, reading reports.

He looks up.

He doesn’t smile.

He never has to.

Because he sees it in my eyes.

I’m ready.

Not for love.

Not for redemption.

But for what comes next.

> “Let’s burn the past,” I say quietly.

“Let’s start something we can’t come back from.”

Arthur stands. Walks over.

Fingers tangle with mine.

> “We already did.”