Odette's POV
He threw me down on the bed like I weighed nothing, like I wasn't a person at all. My back hit the mattress with a dull thud, air rushing from my lungs in a gasp I couldn't hold back. For a heartbeat I just lay there, stunned, my fingers clawing at the sheets as if they could anchor me.
What was wrong with this man?
Always feral. Always grabbing. Always taking.
Touching people without permission, hauling them around like bags of grain, deciding what a literal human being could or couldn't do. He wanted to treat me like a tool when I wasn't a tool. I wasn't something to be owned.
And yet here I was, pinned under his shadow, his hands, his rules.
The door slammed behind him, the sound so loud it cracked through my skull. I flinched hard before I could stop myself. The echo hung in the air like a threat.
Silence.
