Chapter 25: Chained Decisions
Vivian Grey’s POV
When I opened my eyes, it felt like I had slept for years, though it couldn’t have been more than a few hours. I didn’t need to look around to know where I was or to remember what had happened. That girl’s neck snapping right in front of me, the sound had etched itself into my memory, looping every time I blinked. And Zaliver, gods, the way he looked, cloaked in darkness with those inky black eyes and that expression, pure, wild fury. He didn’t just act like a predator. He was one.
I squeezed my eyes shut again, hard enough to see little white spots dance behind my lids. A long, shaky breath pushed from my chest.
I didn’t know what to feel. Toward him. Toward myself. My emotions were caught in a storm, and I stood at the eye of it, torn between human logic and my wolf’s primal understanding. The human in me wanted to scream, to ask how he could kill someone like that, so suddenly, so violently. But my wolf? She didn’t flinch. She understood. She approved, even. To her, his reaction was justified. A mate threatened is a mate defended, no matter the cost.
I wanted to label him a monster. I should have. But that part of me, the side bound to him, understood too well. It frightened me that some piece of me accepted it so easily.
What frightened me more was the calm. Not the calm that comes from being in shock, but something quieter than that. Something that sat in my chest like it had always been there, waiting. I’d watched a girl die, watched the life go out of her face between one word and the next, and some part of me had simply filed it away. Not ignored it. Filed it. Like my wolf had already categorized this under things that happen in the world Zaliver inhabits, and I was going to have to get used to it.
Was I really in danger when she tripped me? I wasn’t sure. Maybe it had been an accident. But deep down, I didn’t think she planned to walk away peacefully, not with the look she gave me. Still, she didn’t deserve that. Why couldn’t he have just warned her? Removed her from the pack? Anything but that.
It was disturbing how calm I felt while watching her die, my mate’s hands ending her life like it meant nothing. I should have screamed, cried, run. But I didn’t. It was as if some part of me had been expecting this. After all, I’d heard the stories. Whispers of what Zaliver was capable of. That he could kill without flinching. I just thought I’d have more time before witnessing it for myself.
I cracked my eyes open again, blinking into the darkness. Heavy curtains kept the room sealed in shadows, but I could tell it was night. I must’ve slept the whole day away. This island was draining me. Or maybe it was everything on the island. The testing. The constant pressure. The endless flood of information I didn’t ask for. At least I was unconscious and not, well, pregnant. A dark chuckle slipped out before I could stop it.
I pushed myself upright and immediately felt the chill on my wrists. A metallic tug followed. My stomach sank.
"No way," I muttered under my breath.
"I did," came Zaliver’s voice, smooth and deadpan.
I turned my head toward him. He sat on the couch across from the bed, legs spread, arms crossed, expression unreadable. His dark hair fell into his eyes, casting shadows over his face. He looked like part of the darkness itself. I couldn’t read what he felt, if he felt anything at all.
And me? I didn’t even know what I was feeling. Resentment? Confusion? Hurt?
I stared at him for a long second, unsure where to even begin. How do you start a conversation after someone murders a girl in front of you?
"So, about that girl you killed today?" Yeah, no.
Instead, I drew in a deep breath and lifted my arm, letting the chains clink softly. My eyes met his, sharp and cold.
"Why?" I asked.
He didn’t even flinch. "Do I need a reason?"
My jaw clenched. "Yes! Yes, you actually do."
He tilted his head, unfazed. "Can’t you guess? I killed someone right in front of you. Do you really think I could trust that you wouldn’t run the second I turned away?"
His gaze shifted to the curtains, and I hated that a small part of me understood. Damn it, he had a point. But that didn’t mean I accepted it.
I stood up, testing the weight of the chains as they followed me. I tugged and, to my surprise, they stretched. I walked farther, past the bed, then toward the bathroom. Still more slack. I stopped at the shower door and turned back to him with narrowed eyes.
"Why are these chains so long?"
"I had them made for you," he said like it was nothing.
I stared at him for a long moment. He’d had chains custom-made for me. Not grabbed whatever was lying around, not improvised. Actually commissioned them, probably before today, which meant some part of him had been planning for the possibility of chaining me up long before that girl hit the ground. The thought should have made me angrier. Instead it just made me feel like a piece on a board he’d been moving for a very long time.
"I don’t know what’s worse," I said flatly, "how long they are, or the fact that you custom-made them for me."
The metal bit into my wrists as I tugged again, harder this time. They didn’t budge. Even calling on my wolf’s strength didn’t loosen them.
Of course they didn’t.
I turned and walked back toward him slowly, hands clasped, the chains dragging softly behind me. He looked tense. Coiled, like he expected me to explode. And the strangest thing? My wolf, despite everything, still leaned toward him. She pushed a gentle nudge through the bond, whispering that he was ours, that he was protecting us the only way he knew how.
But I wasn’t so easily swayed.
I stopped a few feet from him and looked down at the chain looped around my wrists, then back up at him. Six hundred years old, a god, the most powerful being in any room he’d ever walked into, and he’d put me in chains because he was afraid I’d run.
I wasn’t sure if that made me feel sorry for him or more determined than ever to prove him right.
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