Prologue
Kael’s POV
She ran.
I should have expected it. Sybil was never the kind to sit still and accept her fate. Even after everything, after all the ways I tried to keep her safe, keep her mine. She still slipped through my fingers like water through clenched fists. And I was left here, alone, the remnants of her presence fading like a dream.
The moment I entered the house, something was off. Heavy and dense, an immense silence greeted me as though the walls themselves knew. It was too quiet, too empty, as though the air had turned solid.
Then I saw it.
The ajar window in the second-story corridor. The curtains billowing in the wind, fluttering like a flag of surrender. It was an open wound in the home, a silent scream that cramped my stomach.
She was gone.
A rage-filled scream ripped from my torso, tearing apart the quietness of the residence. Fists clenched within my hands as they bunched by my waist, the want to destroy everything seething like water. Groaning shuddered through walls at the force of my anger as I pushed the front door wide open, the crash of wood against rock a mere blink of notice in my mind.
Where is she?
The question burned like acid on my tongue, laced with fury and desperation. My heart hammered in my chest, every beat louder, harder, faster, drowning out reason. I had kept her safe, my safe, and this was how she repaid me?
“WHERE IS SHE?!” My voice rang out, raw and jagged, tearing through the silence with a vicious clarity. The staff froze in place, eyes wide, their gazes flickering everywhere except to me.
Cowards.
They had one job. One. Simple. Job. And they failed.
I didn’t interact with them. Didn’t lose another second. My heels rang hollow on the marble floors as I stormed through the house. My hands shook at my sides, my body was barely restrained from tearing the place apart. The air was thick, choking, clinging to me with the weight of her absence.
I could still smell her. There were subtle hints of her perfume in the air, a bittersweet reminder of the woman who had been able to get under my skin, into my bloodstream. The scent tormented me like a drug that I couldn’t shake, and it caused my chest to tighten with every breath.
“Find her,” I growled, the words laced with something darker, more deadly. The heat of my rage simmered just beneath the surface, barely contained, but the coldness in my tone cut through the room like a knife. “Find her now.”
Still, nothing. Silence. Useless. Every single one of them.
My phone was already in my hand, the cold screen lighting up my palm as I scrolled through my contacts, searching for someone who could track a ghost. Anyone. Everyone.
She wouldn’t get far.
She couldn’t.
She belonged to me.
My jaw clenched as I forced my breathing to steady, fighting the boiling rage that threatened to consume me. Sybil thought she was free. That she could escape. That she could outrun me.
That was her first mistake.
Her second? Thinking I wouldn’t burn the world to ash just to bring her back.
