Leah's POV
I stared at the dress thrown on my bed.
It spread out like a blossom of weaving lies.
I'd been counting the crystals on the chandelier in the ceiling when Lucas appeared - thirty-seven of them shaped like teardrops. He filled the doorway without touching its frame, that cursed crimson fabric draped over his forearm like a skinned serpent. Sunlight caught the black embroidery. I wondered how many slaves had bled to stitch those constellations.
"Wear this." He tossed it onto 800 thread Egyptian cotton quilt. The silk slithered against my bare knees, colder than the iron collar I'd worn in the slave market.
I waited, bathrobe clutched tight. Three heartbeats. Four. The clock above the bed - still smelling of his cologne - ticked like a dying thing. When I turned, Lucas hadn't moved. He'd claimed the wingback chair, legs spread in that infuriating mimicry of relaxation. Sunlight through the French window caught the flawless profile of his face. His eyes fixated on me.
"Change." Not a command. A dare.
The robe fell like a corpse's shroud. I felt his gaze like physical weight - clinical, yet hungry in that detached way of his. The dress hissed as it embraced me, sequins clawing my hips. My reflection in the mirror showed a marionette strung with dark crimson blood.
His breath hit the nape of my neck a moment before his fingers did. "You stopped breathing."
The zipper's teeth closed over my spine. "Would you prefer I scream right now?"
"Save it for the ride." His knuckles brushed the brand between my shoulder blades.
--
Pine needles crackled like bones beneath our boots. Lucas walked with that predator's gait, all coiled tension and calculated indolence. I focused on the forest stench - rotten moss and something metallic beneath the petrichor. His scent invaded anyway: cologne and bergamot, the same as when he'd cornered me in the shopping center yesterday. My knees remembered leather against bare skin, his teeth testing along my collarbone.
"You're favoring your left leg," he said without turning.
"Probably some old wounds." I whispered.
"Oh, really?" His shadow elongated across a granite boulder. "Now you're remembering things."
The cliff emerged like a broken promise. Wind ripped through the fabric prison, carrying voices from the valley below - children's laughter, sharp as shrapnel. I heard it before in my nightmare. The child who had no face. The child who broke into a thousand pieces as soon as I touched him. I filled my lungs until the dress seams threatened to burst.
When I turned, he'd removed his gloves. The absence felt more intimate than the kiss he'd stolen.
"Why this farce?" My voice surprised me - cracked porcelain, not the steel I'd intended. "The dress? The walk?"
His thumb stroked the watch face. "You cried in your dream last night."
Ice flooded my veins. The child in the fog - small hands pressed against glass, screaming a name that might've been mine.
"You think forgetting's a wound?" I stepped toward the edge, heels catching on shale. "It's an amputation. I'm a phantom limb."
"Interesting metaphor." His boot crushed a cluster of blue monkshood. "Considering you broke your wrists last night while you were punching those soldiers and now you've recovered so fast."
The memory hit like a cattle prod.
"Marvelous, isn't it?" Dr. Jafar's voice next to my ear. "The Lycan genome remembers what the mind cannot."
Lycan. I'm not a Lycan. I can't be one. But the other night, when the Lycan King came... The way he stared at me... The way he called me... Did he know something? No way. There's no way. That's impossible.
Lucas closed the distance, his shadow swallowing mine. "You and Finn are not that different. Both of you are part of the enhancement project. Finn traded sanity for strength. You traded..." His gaze dropped to my throat. "...something more poetic."
Wind whipped his shirt open, revealing his chest - the queit and broad plain I leaned against yesterday. My traitorous fingers twitched, remembering the heat of his body.
"When you kissed me yesterday..." I swallowed the tremor. "...why did you do that?"
His laugh tasted like arsenic. "Women kiss for a hundred reasons. Men?" He traced the veins on my wrist all the way down to my shoulder. "We only need one."
The oak at my back groaned as he caged me in. His knee pressed between my thighs, not cruel, not kind - like a scientist testing reflexes.
"You've dreamed of the past." Not a question. His thumb found the pulse beneath my jaw. "You screamed so badly that I had to gag you. What do you remember? What happened to you in the past?"
"Let. Me. Go." I tilted my head away, bearing tears in my eyes. "I'd rather die to remembering the past."
He sensed the tremor of my body.
"What? Are you scared of me?" he asked. "Have I ever hurt you in any way? Have I ever been rough with you or forced you to do anything that you don't want to do?"
The fake tenderness in his voice immediately set my body on fire. My knees buckled.
I didn't know why, but there was impulsive sexual tension between us. I couldn't resist it, even though I knew it was dangerous.
The wind was roaring next to my ear. He pinned me against the tree, so I got nowhere else to go.
"Why can't you leave me alone?! Why do you have to drag me around like this? Shouldn't you spend time looking for your mate or organizing an army or something? Why..."
"You're here with me because that's your Alpha's request. You're still alive because I'm not done with you..."
I remained silent.
He leaned forward. I thought he was about to kiss me again, but it turned out he was just looking down at the cliff. Then, he stared at me and said, "When I'm done with you, you'll have my permission to die."
How could someone use the tenderest voice to say the cruelest thing like this?
The world tilted. Flames of tears licked the edges of my vision. Lucas' hand clamped my waist as I swayed.
Then, he lifted his arm to check on his watch.
"People say that their entire life will flash past their eyes before they die," he said without looking at me.
"What...?!"
I didn't manage to finish my words.
The push came gentle, almost reverent. For a suspended heartbeat, I thought he'd pull me back. Then gravity took over.
Falling felt like peeling skin.
Wind screamed in my ears, tearing the dress to crimson shrapnel. Lucas' voice followed me down, velvet wrapped around a blade. "The memories will catch you before the rocks do."