"I don't know who I am now, not after years of pretending," 

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[Two months after Ahana joined the team] 
Typing...


Ahana 

There was blood in her hands.

"These were expensive gloves you know," she muttered, as she stared at the leather glow torn from the centre from the cut that bleeds, mixing her blood with the others, "damn you people, can't care about fashion," she huffed, kicking the groaning man aside while she walked forward.

The warehouse smelt of blood, metal and something worse, something rotten.

But Ahana didn't pay any mind to it, her boots clacked against the floor as she moved forward, her black coat swaying with the wind. She knelt down near one of the man who was clutching his stomach, his breath ragged.

Her hand slid into the man's hair and yanked his head up until his neck strained. He whimpered, face pale under the harsh light above them. "P-please—don't kill me—"

"Tsk, I don't kill," she muttered, her gaze almost pitiful as she looked at him, "not usually anyway, I don't even like staining my hands with bloods you know, but some people-" she tightened her grip ever so slightly, while he whimpered, "just wouldn't let me live in peace, so, I am gonna ask you this, one time, one, what the 'hell' are you doing here?"

"We-we were just hoping to steal-"

"Wrong answer," she sighed, slamming his head on the ground instead, before she again strained it back, "I have intel, and you are stupid. So let me rephrase my question, who sent you here, so you are circling my team members for the past week. Or more specifically me?"

The man's eyes darted around the warehouse, to his unconscious team sprawled around her boots, "W-we were sent to retrieve you–"

"Retrieve?" she echoed, one brow lifting, while she mused if she should be amused or offended, "you make it sound like I'm a parcel that got delivered to the wrong address,"

The man flinched, "He-he said it like that, he wants you back there," his voice was low, barely above the sound of the clock ticking, but it was enough for her to hear.

For a second, there was silence.

Before she laughed.

Not in amusement.

Not in anger.

Just a slow, hollow, broken laugh.

Almost like she was surprised at fate, "Of course he does," she said, her voice cold, though her eyes betrayed a flicker of emotion, "That old hag just know how to take and take and take, until you are nothing,"

"He also sent us to–" that man hesitated torn between his loyalty to the hefty payment he had received and his heartbeat that thud painfully against his ribs, he had broken a few ribs for sure, "– gather information about, Mr. Hiwatari and-"

She looked down.

Jaw clenched.

Kai, huh?

"And?" her voice was low, like a melody, a dangerous, deadly melody.

"To bring him back, under whatever conditions. That was the priority. I-please now let me go, I have told you everything. We all just do this work for money, we don't know anything else,"

For a second, she felt her heart stop.

For just a fleeting second, she can almost, almost feel the tendrils of dread coiling around her stomach.

Before she stood up, her hands slipped free through the man's hair.

They were thinking of...kidnapping Kai?

Kidnapping.

She repeated the word in her mind, as if saying it once wasn't enough, as if her brain needed time to register the sheer insanity, the audacity of it all. Kidnapping him. That cruel, twisted, psychotic piece of shit—he wanted to take Kai away. Like a pawn. Like he owned him.

Up until this moment, she hadn't been sure. She hadn't known if she could trust Kai completely, not with his past, not with how deep the Abbey had once sunk its claws into him. She didn't know if he was still tied to Voltaire somehow—if he was playing a game of survival or if he was truly free. She hadn't known if she needed to protect him or protect her team from him.

But now she knows.

She knows.

She knows that he walked away. Not quietly. Not out of weakness. He tore himself free from that godforsaken life with bloodied hands and scorched earth behind him. And that's what Voltaire can't stand. Not that he's gone—but that he left on his own. That he chose freedom. Chose something—someone—else.

And now Voltaire wants him back.
Not because he misses him.
Not because he needs him.
But because he lost.
Because control slipped through his fingers and he can't fucking stand it.

"Do not show your face around here," she muttered, running a hand through her face, before her eyes flickered to him "and tell him," she said slowly, "Go back and tell him—tell that deranged, narcissistic, hollow excuse of a man—that I am not his weapon. I am not his toy. I am not a project or an experiment or a file in his drawer or a story he gets to rewrite whenever he feels like it. I am not his fucking success story. He doesn't get to own my scars, or my silence, or my name,"

"And that—karma's coming. Fast. Brutal. And I hope he's watching when it hits,"

She turned around rolling her shoulder to ease the pain that had settled, her jaw clenched.

"And, also tell him, very clearly, stay the fuck away from this team. They are under my protection now, and he does know what that means right? Just as Dazallion guards those four sacred beasts, I would guard them. So, I swear on the name of my bey, if, if, any of them get even a scratch due to his schemes. He would make it worse for himself. Tell him to stay away from my team and from this team's captain.

"Do not try to come near him, do not breathe near him, do not even think about him. Because I swear on the ashes of what I once used to be, he wouldn't get to him, I will be damned before his fingers would graze Dranzer or Kai,"

***

Ahana returned to her suite after that, her hand bloodied and mind messed up. The door closed behind her.

She locked it.

Automatically. One lock. Two. Three.

The deadbolt.

The chain.

Security code.

Again.

And again.

Click.
Click.
Click.

As if locking it would lock the demons that threaten to ghost her out too, as if it would provide the sense of security that had been taken away so long ago. She could feel her eyes burning, though no tears came. No, tears were for people who had time to break, who had the luxury to have enough tears left that they could cry whenever they wanted.

But her knees buckled just a little. Just enough for her spine to find the wall behind her, she slid down, slow and silent, until she sat curled near the door. Fists clenching fabric. Fingertips numb.

They had come so close.

So fucking close.

If there had been more of them, if they hadn't underestimated her, if they had been more coordinated, if-

She pressed her palms to her face. Hard.

Her nails scraped skin.

She needed to feel something. Anything to keep her from drowning in the haunting whispers of what ifs.

If they had taken her back, retrieve as they had said, what then?
She wrapped her arms tighter around herself, while memories that she try so hard to bury try to break free to the surface; the filthy smell of the cell, the bite of the restraints, the iron scent of the blood, her blood, mixed with the scent of metal, hearing the sound of her own skin tearing as its blade create a canvas on her hands.

The cold hands.

And even colder gazes and words.

Voltaire.

Her scars itched. Old ones. The kind that weren't on the surface.She could almost feel the gloved hands again, the sterile rooms, the control.

Somewhere between the haze in her mind, she managed to stagger to her room. Her hand resting on the silver handle of the drawer, the metal seemed to twinkle from the moonlight that managed to find its way in her room– seemed to mock her with how it was shining.

The meds were still here, just a pull away.

She had stopped talking almost a year ago. Almost a year clean from the meds that had flowed through her body for years, to keep her from overthinking, to keep those thoughts in control, to let her feel peace. The numb kind. The quiet kind.

Why?

Just why did her life have to reach this position?

She didn't pull it, her veins visible under the mental control she was trying to have, to not open that door.

Deep breaths. Shh, focus, just push through it.

And while she stood there fighting a battle against her own mind, for a second she wondered if, somewhere else, the other person who could come close to know what she had gone through– Kai, also experience this suffocating weight of helplessness sometimes, if he had also a drawer that he had stopped opening, so that he can pretend he was fine now. That the trauma that Abbey gave was nothing more than past.

If he was pretending that it didn't affect him.

Just like her. 

*** 
a/n; hello everyone! I know, I know, you can curse me if you want for the late update but I would def try to update this book from now on. Focusing on this book only :)) So, I would say you can expect regular updates from now on, and, also expect that it would be finished in two months or so. Don't worry we have a longg way to go, the real tension and romance is just about to begin. 
so take care and do let me know your thoughts ❤️