Chapter 9: The Willing Captive
Rain still whispered against the windowpane, a soft counterpoint to the ragged rhythm of Jace’s sleeping breath. Kate lay rigid, watching the rise and fall of his chest where the quilt had slipped low. The candle had guttered out hours ago, leaving only the faint grey pre-dawn light seeping through the curtains. It painted his profile in stark relief: the strong line of his nose, the shadowed hollow beneath a sharp cheekbone, the scar bisecting his lower lip. He looked younger asleep. Less like a force of nature, more like just a man. A man with a vicious bite mark on his shoulder, dark and swollen against his skin.
Her fingers moved before she could stop them. Lightly, tentatively, she brushed a strand of damp, dark hair away from his forehead. The touch felt illicit, monumental. He’d stayed. After the blood, the steam, the obsidian raven pressed into his wound, the unnerving poetry… he hadn’t vanished into the predawn gloom. He was still here, solid and warm beside her, radiating heat even through the flannel shirt she still wore. The scent of him – leather, rain, salt, and something else, something metallic and dark – clung to her sheets, to her skin. It felt less like an invasion now, more like a brand. Proof.
He stirred. Not a jolt, just a deep inhalation, his eyelids flickering. His hand, resting near the obsidian bird on the quilt, shifted. His fingers brushed hers where they lingered near his temple. Kate froze, heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. He didn’t open his eyes. His fingers curled, capturing hers, not roughly, but with a possessiveness that stole her breath. He brought her captured hand down, pressing her knuckles against his chest, right over the thudding beat of his heart. It felt… grounding. Terrifying.
"Thought I dreamed the raven," he murmured, his voice thick with sleep, rough gravel. He still didn’t look at her.
"No dream," she whispered. Her voice sounded alien in the quiet.
A low rumble vibrated in his chest beneath her hand, almost a purr. "GoodKate woke to the sharp scent of coffee cutting through the lingering musk of sex and rain-damp skin. The bed beside her was empty, the sheets cool where Jace had been. She blinked against the pale morning light filtering through her gauzy curtains, her body a map of dull aches—the bite on her shoulder, the bruises on her hips, the ghost of his fingers on her throat.
Her flannel shirt lay crumpled on the floor. She pulled it on, the fabric stiff with dried blood at the collar. The obsidian raven was gone from the nightstand.
The apartment was quiet except for the low hum of the sink running in the kitchen. She padded down the hallway, bare feet against cold hardwood, and stopped in the doorway.
Jace stood at her counter, shirtless, his tattoos stark in the morning light. His shoulder was a mess of half-dried blood and swollen flesh, but he moved like it didn’t exist, pouring coffee into a chipped mug she hadn’t used in months. His back was to her, the muscles tense under ink and scars.
“You’re still here,” she said, voice rough with sleep.
He didn’t turn. “Coffee’s shit. Your filters are ancient.”
She leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. “You could’ve left.”
“Yeah.” He finally glanced over his shoulder, eyes dark and unreadable. “I could’ve.”
The silence stretched, thick with last night’s violence and the things neither of them had said. The bite on her shoulder throbbed.
He pushed the mug toward her. “Drink it. You look like hell.”
She took it, their fingers brushing. His were warm. Calloused. She sipped—bitter, too strong, just how she liked it.
“You memorized how I take my coffee,” she said.
“Observant, aren’t I?” He smirked, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He grabbed his cut from the back of a chair and pulled it on, wincing slightly as the leather pressed against his wound.
She watched him. The way his jaw flexed when he moved his arm. The way he didn’t look at her.
“You’re leaving,” she said. Not a question.
He paused, hand on the doorknob. “Got shit to do.”
“What kind of shit?”
“The kind that doesn’t involve you.”
She set the mug down too hard, coffee sloshing over the rim. “After last night, that’s what you’re going with?”
He turned then, fully facing her, his expression carefully blank. “What do you want me to say, Kate? You want me to fucking cradle your face and whisper sweet nothings? That’s not what this is.”
“I know what it is.” Her voice was steady, but her hands weren’t. “But you don’t get to act like last night didn’t happen.”
A muscle jumped in his jaw. “It happened. So what?”
She stepped closer, close enough to smell leather and the faint metallic tang of his blood. “So you don’t get to walk out like it was nothing.”
He stared down at her, his gaze flickering over her face—her lips, her throat, the fresh bruise there. Then, slowly, he reached out and hooked a finger under the collar of her flannel, tugging it down just enough to expose the bite mark. His thumb brushed the edge, deliberate, possessive.
“It wasn’t nothing,” he said, voice low. “But it doesn’t change anything.”
Her breath hitched. “Why not?”
He leaned in, his mouth grazing her ear. “Because I don’t do gentle, little moth. And you?” He pulled back just enough to meet her eyes. “You’re still pretending you do.”
Her stomach dropped.
He stepped back, releasing her. “Lock the door behind me.”
Then he was gone, the door clicking shut softly behind him. The apartment was too quiet without him. Too empty.
Kate stood there for a long moment, the taste of coffee bitter on her tongue. Then she walked to the window, peeling back the curtain just enough to watch him stride down the sidewalk toward his bike.
He didn’t look back.
Her fingers drifted to the bite on her shoulder, pressing down just hard enough to hurt. Proof.
She let the curtain fall.
The curtain fell back into place, thick cotton swallowing the grey light and the sight of his retreating form. Kate stared at the faded floral pattern, the fabric suddenly too bright, too mundane against the raw electricity still sparking under her skin. Her fingers tightened on the sill, knuckles white. He doesn’t do gentle. The words echoed, scraping against the tender places inside her, mixing with the phantom sting of his thumb brushing her bite. Proof. Tangled. Left behind.
Silence roared in the small apartment, louder than the rain had been, louder than his bike’s engine fading down the street. It pressed in, thick and suffocating. She turned, her gaze catching the chipped mug he’d used, abandoned on the counter beside a dark ring of spilled coffee. The sight felt like a punch. Cheap ceramic, ancient filters – evidence of his temporary inhabitation, mocking her sudden, profound emptiness. She needed noise. Movement. Anything.
She grabbed the mug, intending to wash it, to scrub away the evidence, the scent of his cheap coffee. Her hand shook violently. The mug slipped, hitting the edge of the sink with a sharp crack, shattering, sending jagged pieces and cold, bitter dregs spraying across the linoleum. Kate flinched, staring down at the wreckage – brown liquid pooling around sharp white shards. It mirrored the chaos inside her chest. A choked sound escaped her, part sob, part curse. She sank to her knees, ignoring the potential for cuts, and began gathering the pieces, her movements jerky, fueled by a sourceless panic. The sharp edge of a fragment bit into her thumb. A bead of blood welled, bright red against the pale skin near her lollipop tattoo. Persist. It felt like a sick joke. She pressed the wound hard, welcoming the clean, focused pain.
The mess was mostly contained, sharp ceramic piled on a paper towel, the coffee mopped up with another, leaving a sticky smear. The silence returned, heavier now. She washed her hands, the water stinging the small cut. The apartment felt vast and hollow. Her shoulder throbbed, a deep, insistent ache beneath the flannel. Drawn back to the bedroom, she surveyed the battlefield – the rumpled quilt smelling of sweat and him, the indent on the pillow where his head had been. The obsidian raven was gone. He’d taken it. A tiny, unexpected pang lanced through her. Proof of the choosing. He chose to take it.
Exhaustion hit her like a wave, the adrenaline crash finally overwhelming the jittery anxiety. She crawled onto the bed, onto his side, burying her face in the pillow that still held the faint scents of leather and rain and something uniquely Jace. It was stupid. Pathetic. But the warmth lingered there, a ghost of the heat he radiated. She pulled the quilt over her head, cocooning herself in the dark, in the sensory echo of him. The bite on her shoulder pulsed in time with her heartbeat. Outside, the city sounds were muffled, distant. The raw places inside her felt scraped open, exposed. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to banish the image of his face as he left – the careful blankness, the finality. It wasn’t nothing. But it didn’t change anything. Sleep pulled at her, a dark, welcoming tide promising oblivion from the confusing storm of relief and desolation.
She drifted, not quite asleep, not quite awake, floating in the liminal space where the ache in her shoulder merged with the deeper ache inside. The scent of him was a lullaby and a curse. The room was utterly still, the only sound her own uneven breathing under the quilt. Time lost meaning. Then, a sound. Not outside. Not the city. A sharp, ragged gasp. Close. Followed instantly by the violent shift of weight beside her, the mattress groaning in protest.
HE AWAKENS SUDDENLY.
Jace sat bolt upright, a dark silhouette against the dim light seeping under the quilt. His breath came in short, harsh bursts, loud in the sudden stillness. She felt the tension radiating off him, a live wire crackling in the confined space. His hand shot out beside him, fingers scrabbling across the sheet – searching, frantic. Not for her. For the raven. Finding only rumpled cotton, his hand clenched into a fist, knuckles cracking audibly. He froze, head turning slowly, deliberately, towards the lump she made under the covers. His voice, when it came, was low, graveled with sleep and something darker, colder than the rain. "Who?"
The single word hung in the dim air, sharp as broken glass. "Who?" Jace’s voice was gravel scraped raw, his eyes unfocused, searching the shadowed ceiling. Not seeing her. Seeing something else entirely. Something that made his muscles coil like springs under scarred skin.
Kate froze under the quilt, every nerve screaming. The sudden shift from exhausted near-sleep to this crackling tension left her breathless. His hand, still clenched where the raven wasn’t, trembled slightly. The air vibrated with the raw, animal panic rolling off him. She saw the sweat beading at his temple.
"Jace?" Her voice emerged thin, barely a whisper.
His head snapped towards the sound, eyes locking onto the quilt-lump that was her. Recognition flickered, then vanished, swallowed by the primal fear. He lunged.
Not at her. Towards the edge of the bed. A guttural sound ripped from his throat – pure, distilled terror. He scrambled backwards, his movements jerky, uncontrolled. His bare back slammed hard against the bedroom wall with a sickening thud. Plaster dust puffed into the air. He braced himself, one arm raised defensively, the other hand still searching frantically across the sheets, the headboard, the nightstand. Empty. Where was it? His breath hitched, ragged and shallow. Fear twisted his features into something unfamiliar, stripped of all control. The predator cornered.
The flannel shirt felt too thin, too flimsy against the sudden chill in the room. Kate slowly pushed the quilt down from her face, exposing herself inch by inch. She kept her movements small, deliberate, like approaching a wounded animal. The bite on her shoulder throbbed in time with her hammering heart. "Jace," she tried again, pushing more air into it. Steadier. "It's Kate. Just me."
His wild eyes darted to her, skittered away, then back. His gaze raked over her face, hair, the exposed skin of her throat above the flannel collar. Searching for threats. Or familiarity. The defensive arm slowly lowered a fraction. The frantic searching stopped. His fingers curled into a white-knuckled fist against his thigh. He blinked, rapid-fire, as if trying to clear fog. A low groan escaped him, the sound of something immense and painful surfacing. He pressed the heels of his hands hard against his eyesockets. "Fuck," he breathed, the word thick and muffled. "Fucking... dream."
The tension didn't vanish, but it shifted, coiling inwards. The raw terror ebbed, leaving exhaustion etched deeper into the lines around his eyes, replaced by a heavy, vibrating shame. He slumped slightly against the wall, head thumping back. The stark vulnerability was more jarring than the violence. He looked gutted. Kate stayed still, watching the tremor run through the arm braced against the wall. Rain rattled the windowpane. A distant siren wailed. Real sounds replacing the nightmare’s silence.
He lowered his hands slowly. His gaze met hers, finally clear. The burning intensity was banked, replaced by a hollow bleakness that scared her more than his earlier fury. He looked at her – really looked – taking in her wide eyes, the way she’d pulled the quilt up protectively, the fresh bruise blooming on her throat. His jaw tightened. He pushed off the wall with deliberate effort, the movement stiff. He didn’t speak. He just walked, bare feet silent on the wood floor, past the bed, heading for the door. Retreating.
"I broke the mug," Kate blurted out, the words tumbling free into the tense silence. Anything to stop him vanishing back into the shadows of her hallway. Anything to anchor him here, now. "The one you used. In the sink."
He paused in the doorway, a dark silhouette framed against the slightly brighter light from the living area. He half-turned. For a second, the bleakness flickered with something else. Surprise? A ghost of dark amusement? It was gone before she could grasp it. He just grunted, a noncommittal sound, and disappeared into the hall. She heard him in the kitchen, the faucet running briefly. The sound of glass shards being swept into the trash bin. Metal on ceramic. Then silence again.
He reappeared in the doorway. Leaned a shoulder against the frame, careful of the bite. He studied her, his expression unreadable. "You sleep like the dead," he stated. His voice was flat. "Until you don't."
"And you have nightmares that could wake hell." She pulled the quilt tighter, the flannel rough against her skin. "What was it about?"
His gaze dropped to her throat again, lingered on the bruise. A muscle feathered in his jaw. "Doesn't matter." He pushed off the frame and walked back towards the bed. Not to her. He circled the foot of the bed, his movements regaining some of their usual controlled grace, heading for his jeans, still in a damp heap near the closet where she’d flung them last night.
"It does. You scared the shit out of me." The truth hung in the air, brittle.
He paused, jeans in hand. Didn't look at her. "Good." The word was quiet. Final. He stepped into the jeans, wincing slightly as the denim scraped his wounded shoulder, zipping them with efficient movements.
Kate watched him, the cold knot of his earlier dismissal tightening in her stomach. I don't do gentle. You’re still pretending you do. She pushed herself up, letting the quilt fall. The oversized flannel shirt gaped. "Is that how you deal with everything? Scare it off? Or run?" Her voice had an edge she didn’t recognize. Sharp. Like the obsidian.
He froze, one arm in his leather cut. Slowly, he turned. His eyes, when they met hers, weren't bleak anymore. They were cold. Calculating. The predator assessing prey that had just shown unexpected teeth. "Careful, little moth," he murmured. The warning was velvet over steel.
"Or what?" She stood up, facing him fully. The bite on her shoulder screamed protest. She ignored it. "You'll leave? You already did that once today. Or bite me again? Got that covered." She gestured vaguely at her shoulder. The defiance felt flimsy, fueled by the residue of fear and his casual cruelty. "What are you running from, Jace? In your sleep? From me?"
He took a single, deliberate step towards her. Not threatening. Just closing the distance. He looked down at her, his expression unreadable. The air crackled. He lifted his hand, slowly. Not to strike. His knuckles brushed the side of her throat, just below the bruise he’d put there. The touch was shockingly light. Almost a caress. She flinched, bracing.
Then, a sharp clack echoed from the hallway. Distinct. Hard. Like stone hitting wood.
Both their heads snapped towards the sound. Jace went preternaturally still, his hand dropping from her throat. His entire focus shifted, honed to a razor point. That hunted look flashed back into his eyes, then vanished, replaced by icy alertness. He moved past her, silent as smoke, towards the bedroom door. Kate’s skin prickled. She followed, a step behind.
He stopped just inside the doorway, his body blocking most of her view into the dim hall. She peered around him.
There, on the scuffed wooden floorboards just past the threshold, lay the obsidian raven. It hadn't been there when she passed earlier. It gleamed dully in the weak morning light filtering from the living room window, its polished surface reflecting distorted fragments of the hallway. Impossible. He’d taken it. She’d watched him put it in his cut pocket before he left the first time.
Jace stared at the raven. His breathing had stopped. The only movement was a slight tremor running through the hand clenched at his side. Then, with terrifying slowness, he crouched down. He didn’t touch it. He just stared at the dark stone bird lying mockingly on her floor. A profound stillness settled over him. Heavy. Final.
Kate’s mouth was dry. "You took that," she whispered. "This morning. You put it in your pocket."
He didn’t answer. Didn’t move. The silence stretched, thick with the impossible weight of the raven on the floor. The air felt charged, colder. The shadowed hallway seemed to press in. Kate fought the urge to step back. This wasn't a dream. This solid, cold stone was real. Right there. Where it shouldn't be. Proof.
Still crouching, Jace slowly lifted his gaze from the raven. Not to her. Past her. Through the open bedroom door, to the window where grey light seeped through the curtains. His voice, when it finally came, was low, stripped bare. Haunted. "It found its way back." He finally looked up at her, his eyes holding a depth of bleak understanding that froze her blood. "It always does."
The obsidian raven lay like a dropped accusation between them. "It always does." Jace’s voice scraped the quiet, hollowed out and final. That bleak certainty in his eyes wasn’t just fear; it was resignation to something Kate couldn’t name. Something ancient and hungry.
Her blood turned to ice water. The flannel shirt suddenly felt like a shroud. Twisted letters. The memory flooded back, sharp and sickening – those cryptic notes slipped under her apartment door weeks ago. Ink like dried blood, fragments of unsettling poetry that had pricked her morbid curiosity, whispering about fractured bones and moths drowning in moonlight. She’d kept them. Hidden them like shameful secrets. Proof of the breaking. Tangled. Real. Now, faced with this impossible stone and his haunted stare, the truth crashed over her: she’d invited the storm inside.
She backed up. One bare foot slid silently on the cold wood, then the other. The hallway wall pressed against her spine. "Your words," she whispered, the sound thin and cracking. "What are you?" Panic tightened her throat, making it hard to breathe. "I don’t understand any of it." The cryptic poetry, the raven’s return, the way he looked at her like she was part of some dreadful equation.
Understanding flickered in his gaze, replaced by a chilling intensity. "No," he said, low and dangerous. "You wouldn't." He took a step forward, a predator closing distance. "But you opened the door, Kate."
Terror, pure and electric, surged through her. I never should have read them. Never. Should have burned them. Should have gone straight to Officer Davies, showed him the creepy poems, pointed at Jace loitering by the poetry section. Anything but this. The regret was a physical ache, sharper than the bite on her shoulder. She shuddered violently, the flannel gaping open over her bruised throat. "Stay away from me." It wasn’t a command; it was a plea scraped raw.
He saw the raw fear in her eyes, the way her body coiled to flee. His expression hardened, the bleakness consumed by a sudden, terrifying focus. "Too late, little moth."
As she twisted towards the apartment door, desperation lending her speed, he moved. Not a step. A coiled spring unleashed. He leapt. Not across the raven, but over it, a shadow detaching from the dim hallway light. His body struck hers like a freight train, slamming her back against the wall with brutal force. Air exploded from her lungs in a choked gasp. His forearm pressed hard across her collarbone, pinning her. The cold plaster bit into her back. His face was inches from hers, his breath hot, eyes burning with that unnerving, possessive fire. The world narrowed to the pressure on her chest, the smell of leather and iron, and the terrifying certainty in his voice as he spoke, low and vicious against her ear. "The choosing's done. The binding's set. Running just feeds it."