Page 208 of Fractured Loyalties
I’m finally not shrinking.
I’m starting to fight back, and all on my own.
Caleb’s roar rattles the air, guttural and raw, his hands clawing at his face as the mist burns into his skin.
He doesn’t stay down. He never does. He’s already dragging himself up, gasping, spitting curses, red streaks tearing from the corners of his eyes. The sound of it rips through me, too familiar, too close to the nights when I couldn’t fight back.
The security guard moves then—finally—boots striking the tile, hand braced on his holster. He doesn’t waste words like he’s asking permission. “Stay down!”
Caleb lunges instead, half-blind but feral, swinging wide. His fist glances off the guard’s shoulder, and they collide hard, bodies slamming into the counter. A stack of forms scatters like broken feathers across the floor.
The receptionist yelps into her phone, dropping it into the paperwork. The nurse presses herself into the far corner, hands white around her clipboard.
I don’t move. I don’t breathe. My arm stays raised, canister steady in my grip, even though my hand is shaking so hard I canfeel it rattling through the metal. My pulse pounds in my ears, drowning everything.
Caleb’s voice cuts through anyway. A rasp, guttural. “Mara—”
He wrenches against the guard’s grip, trying to break free, eyes burning, spit hanging at the edge of his mouth. His gaze is red, raw, unfocused, but it finds me through the blur, like it always has.
And for a second, it’s not the clinic anymore. It’s the apartment where he kept me locked in, the smell of whiskey and sweat, the echo of slammed doors.
My finger tightens on the pepper spray.
Then another voice slices through the noise.
“Enough.”
Alec.
He strides into the reception area from the hall, mask hanging loose at his collar, gloves still tugged halfway off his hands. His eyes snap to Caleb, reading him, measuring the danger the way he’s measured failing vitals in an operating room. His presence changes the room instantly—calm, yes, but not soft. Controlled in the way that makes people obey.
Caleb thrashes again, teeth bared. The guard holds him, barely, muscles taut and straining.
Alec doesn’t hesitate. He steps forward, voice edged like steel. “You don’t belong here. You walk out, or you leave with police on your back.”
Caleb spits to the side, a streak hitting the tile, ugly against the clean floor. He laughs, rough, broken. “This isn’t your fight, doctor.”
“It is,” Alec answers, each word cutting like bone. “Because this is my clinic. And she’s under my care.”
The weight of those words slices deeper than I expect. My hand tightens around the spray, chest burning.
Caleb turns his head toward me again, and this time there’s no mask in his expression, no charm, nothing but the feral glint of someone who refuses to let go. “You think this stops me?” His lips pull into something too wide, too jagged to be a smile. “You know it doesn’t. You’ll always come back.”
The guard jerks him toward the door, each step a struggle, Caleb’s boots dragging across the tile.
He doesn’t resist enough to need cuffs. He doesn’t need to. His words weigh more than his body ever could.
The door shuts behind him with a heavy thud.
The whole room exhales. The nurse’s clipboard clatters to the counter. The receptionist sags against her chair, phone still off the hook.
The guard mutters into his radio, clipped words about “individual removed from premises,” his eyes darting to me, then back to Alec. The receptionist bends, scooping papers off the floor with hands that won’t stop trembling. The nurse presses her back to the wall, her face pale, eyes darting between us all like she doesn’t know where safety actually sits.
And me—I’m still standing, spray raised, chest heaving, hand aching from how tight I’m clutching the can. My skin is on fire, yet cold inside. I can’t lower my arm. It’s like if I let go now, I’ll unravel with it.
Alec turns. His hand comes down on my wrist—not rough, but firm, grounding. His eyes pin mine. “Mara. He’s gone.”
My throat works, but nothing comes out. I can’t trust my voice. My chest feels too tight, like if I try to speak, something raw will break loose.
