Chapter 185

The Prey

Two days.

That’s how long I’d been here. Trapped in a sterile cocoon of white walls and beeping machines, wrapped in the suffocating embrace of pity.

People came. Some with flowers, some with whispered condolences, their voices dipping into a hushed reverence as if speaking too loudly might shatter me.

Even Krystina.

She looked like a shadow of myself—gaunt, hollowed out, as if the incident had carved its way through her bones. There was something hauntingly familiar in her eyes, something that mirrored the desolation inside me. A reflection. A warning.

I was just like her. Maybe worse.

And yet, everyone came.

Everyone… except him.

Or maybe he did. Maybe in the silence of the night, when the world was asleep and the walls no longer had eyes, he slipped in like a ghost. Maybe it was his fingers that curled around mine, warm and firm. Maybe it was his breath I felt against my temple, murmuring my name—my n