Page 71 of Chain Me Knot

I just have to work harder.

“Hey, Tough Girl,” he greets, eyes warm, lingering on her blushing face. And there it is again, another quicksilver flash of color into her skin, another shy, blossoming smile as Phoenix gently guides her toward a chair at the table. “Have we prepared a meal for you. I hope you like spaghetti bolognaise. It’s our specialty.”

She sinks onto the chair, fingers tangling in the sweater, but this time her eyes linger upward. Phoenix’s easy presence has coaxed forth something startlingly lovely on her face— the gentle curve of her lips widening tentatively into a true smile. “I do. It’s one of my favorites…my mom used to make it for me all the time.”

She’s shared something about herself with us and I vow to perfect the art of bolognaise.

The kitchen falls silent. All three of us alphas freeze, eyes fixed in shared wonder at the unexpected brilliance. That smile transforms her entirely, blossoming like fragile petals in moonlight, luminous and pure, colored by a gentle sweetness none of us have yet fully witnessed.

It’s magic. Pure, devastating magic.

Phoenix eventually clears his throat, breaking the spell, though his voice is hushed, reverent, and more than a little teasing. “Careful there, Emma. Keep smiling like that, and the garlic bread will burn.”

A shaky, embarrassed laugh spills from her lips, musical and delicate, and subtly cracks open the shell of caution she still wears around us.

And just like that, hope surges forward, fierce and undeniable, because even if I’m the farthest away from winning her trust completely, her smile right now tells me…we might have a chance.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Emma

Asudden, jarring boom jerks me from sleep, ripping me from soft oblivion into immediate, suffocating panic. Darkness presses down on me from all sides, heavy and absolute.

No. No, oh gods. Not again.

I’m back in the basement.

Imprisoned in that stale, dark tomb.

Buried alive surrounded by damp walls and impenetrable darkness.

My heart explodes into a racing rhythm and fear slices beneath my skin. My breaths are ragged blades, sawing in too-tight lungs as ghost footfalls come toward me. Tap, tap, tap down the stairs. There’s nowhere to go.Nowhere to run. I’m chained to a brick wall with the bite of iron. If I could saw my foot off I gladly would, but even if I did that, I’d never get through the bars.

Pack Carmichael are coming for me to do unspeakable things to my body.

I won’t survive it.

Living terror shatters me apart.

I scream, sharp and involuntary, the sound thin and strangled in my ears as I fight to free myself from the tangles around my legs. Light floods the doorway, silhouettes filling the opening. Three towering shadows framed by dim hallway glow.

They're huge, ominous. Matthew. James. Derek. The dark devils of Pack Carmichael. Come for me again.

“No!”

Need to get away. Scramble back. Legs twisting in blankets. I lunge. Fall to land on carpet. Breath jars from my lungs. My pulse hammers loud and wild in my head. Heart thrashing against the cage of my ribs.

A figure closes the distance. Arms scoop me upright like I'm nothing, like I'm a ghost made of air and terror, and I fight against the strong, solid chest pressed against mine.

“Please let me go,” The words are raw. Broken. Desperate.

The arms stay around me, locking me down. I'm trapped, enclosed, captured again. My nightmare life is a choking reality wrapping its suffocating hands around me. Steel arms bind me. One large hand cradles the back of my head, forcing my face into the hollow of a throat. I inhale to scream again, wild panic flaring higher, deeper, until his scent floods me.

Whiskey. Dark, smoky, and powerful. Old, reassuring leather teases the smoke.

The terror seizing me falls away. A slice of awareness cuts through the tornado in my head.

Asher. Asher is holding me.

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