WisteriaLind
Adopted twice. Abandoned twice.
By the time Calla Summers learned how to hope, she had already learned how to lose.
She chose the Life-Hands Orphanage over another broken promise, believing distance was safer than love, and solitude less painful than rejection.
At twenty-eight, Calla is unraveling. Survival has become a hollow routine, her past an unrelenting weight. When she finally decides to run-anywhere, everywhere, nowhere-it is not freedom she finds. It is him.
Kidnapped and waking inside a locked cell, Calla is dragged into a hidden world that has been watching her far longer than she realizes. A world of shadows, secrets, and a truth that refuses to let her go.
Because some darkness does not simply surround you. It chooses you.
Will Calla uncover the truth behind the obsession that now claims her?
Or will she run again-only to learn that escape was never an option?
"Mine," he whispered against my left ear.
The word wasn't a promise. It was a sentence.
He swept my hair away from my neck, exposing skin as though I belonged to him already. He inhaled slowly-deeply-like he was memorizing me, branding me into his lungs.
"Say it, Calla," he murmured, his voice low, intimate, inevitable. "Say you're mine."
His lips brushed my neck, feather-light at first, then lingering-claiming. My breath hitched before I could stop it. His hands closed around my waist, firm, unyielding, as though testing how easily I could be held there.
"Say it," he repeated, softer now. More dangerous.
"I'm yours," I breathed, my voice trembling as much from fear as from want.
A quiet hum vibrated against my skin-satisfied. Possessive.
"You always were," he said. "You just didn't know it yet."
His grip tightened, anchoring me to him.
"I'll make sure you never forget," he continued calmly. "I'll be the only place you run to. The only place you're allowed."
His lips returned to my ear.
"And if you try to leave," he whispered, almost tenderly, "I'll bring you back. Every time."