Page 147 of Somno Slave

That’s ridiculous.

I must’ve put it on this morning and forgotten about it. Half-asleep. Distracted. That’s the only explanation that makes sense.

But the unease keeps spreading anyway.

I hook my nail beneath the clasp and try to force it open. The metal doesn’t even shift. I frown harder and tug again, moreaggressively this time. The bracelet bites sharply against my skin but the clasp still refuses to move, twisted so tightly it almost looks fused together rather than fastened.

A cold feeling starts crawling slowly up the centre of my chest.

My fingers find my ID badge automatically.

I grip the plastic hard enough that the edges dig painfully into my palm, grounding myself in the familiar shape of my own name.

DOCTOR RHEDA AINSLEY.

The metal around my wrist stays ice cold anyway. And beneath it, my wrist aches sharply.

Chapter Forty-Two

Rheda

The second night is worse.

I do not even pretend I am trying to sleep.

The lights are off, the apartment drowned in the kind of silence that feels deliberate. Everything looks the same as the night before—the same curtains half-drawn, the same weak lamplight slipping through the gaps in thin gold lines, the same ceiling I have spent too many hours staring at—but the quiet has changed. It feels heavier tonight. Closer. Like something breathing softly in the corner of the room, patient enough to wait forever.

I lie on my back and watch the strips of light stretch across the ceiling.

Waiting.

It is pathetic, really.

I hated when he was here. I hated the way he forced himself into every thought, every dream, every private part of me I had spent years keeping locked down. I hated the humiliation of it. The helplessness. The way my own body betrayed me.

So why does this feel worse?

Why does his absence feel like punishment?

My throat tightens.

I should never have said enough.

The words haunt me more than the dreams do. They sit ugly in my chest, replaying over and over, sharper every time. I said it like I had the right, like I was the one being wronged, like I was the wounded party.

But he had been showing me pieces of himself. Ugly ones. Intimate ones. Pieces that still bled.

And I shut the door in his face.

Maybe that was the moment he decided I was not worth returning to. Maybe he left because I made him.

The thought makes something deep in my stomach twist.

If someone watched me hand them the worst parts of myself, and they recoiled—if they looked at my pain and called it too much—I would never forgive them.

I would make them regret it.

Maybe he will, too.