The dream came like a storm—sudden, violent, disorienting.
Astrid found herself in a room drenched in shadows, her breath coming ragged and loud in her ears. There was an argument happening, and though at first the voices were muffled, blurred by the haze of sleep, they soon sharpened until they cut her like glass.
Her own voice rose above the chaos, raw and jagged. But it wasn't really hers.
"I'll kill the baby!"
The words ripped through her throat like fire. She looked down and realized her hand—trembling, white-knuckled—gripped a knife, its blade glinting under the dim light. The point pressed against a swollen belly, skin stretched over a life that hadn't yet taken its first breath.
Terror and fury clashed inside her, and she couldn't tell which belonged to her and which belonged to the memory.
Across from her stood Kyle.
Not the cool, calculated Kyle she had grown accustomed to seeing in boardrooms and in their silent evenings together. This Kyle was something else entirely—face contorted with rage, his voice booming, splintering through the walls. His eyes, normally sharp but measured, were ablaze with something primal. He looked less like a man and more like a storm unchained.
The tension in the room was suffocating. She could hear Emberly's screams—her screams—echoing, daring, almost taunting him.
Then, in the space of a heartbeat, Kyle lunged forward.
The knife flashed. There was a rush of heat, then blood—too much blood. Screams shattered the air until everything dissolved into red.
Astrid jolted awake, her body drenched in sweat, her heart pounding so hard she thought it might crack her ribs. She sat upright, clutching her chest with trembling fingers, desperate to remind herself of where she was.
No blood.
No knife.
No screaming.
The room was still. The curtains fluttered slightly from the night breeze seeping in through a crack. Her breaths came in ragged gasps, each one catching against the weight in her lungs.
But the memory wasn't hers.
She knew the truth of her own pain, the betrayals that had led her to that final leap off the cliff. She had lived her suffering. But this… this was Emberly's. Emberly's memory, Emberly's madness, Emberly's scream. And yet, Astrid felt it like a scar carved into her own bones.
"Nightmare?"
The voice made her jump. She spun toward the sound, her pulse leaping into her throat.
Kyle stood there, framed in the doorway of the bathroom, his hair damp and his body still slick with water. A towel hung low on his hips, drops tracing slow paths down the hard ridges of his abdomen before disappearing into the fabric. His presence filled the room with an ease that unsettled her.
Her gaze caught on something else—something she hadn't noticed before. A scar, pale against the tan of his chest, slashing diagonally like the remnant of a wound that had once been deep and unforgiving.
Her breath caught. Could it be connected to the dream? To that violent moment of lunging, the knife, the blood?
She forced her gaze back to his face, but the image seared itself into her mind.
Kyle's eyes lingered on her, perceptive and steady. "Ember?" he said again, softer this time.
She swallowed hard and nodded quickly, her throat too dry to form a proper lie. "Just a dream."
His brow furrowed, but he didn't press. Instead, he shifted, giving her the grace of space. "Your mother's visit," he said, his tone carefully casual as he pulled on a crisp shirt. "How was it?"
Astrid blinked, thrown by the sudden shift in conversation. For a moment, she almost confessed the turmoil—the harsh words, the veiled threats, the relentless weight of expectation. But something in her stopped short. The walls Emberly had built were still there, and Astrid was trapped behind them.
"It was fine," she lied, forcing her voice into something steady.
Kyle's movements slowed, as though her words didn't quite convince him. But he said nothing, simply continued buttoning his shirt with that same quiet efficiency.
Astrid, flustered, blurted, "I… cooked."
The words sounded ridiculous the moment they left her mouth.
Kyle paused, mid-button, then turned toward her with a look of sheer disbelief. "You?"
Her cheeks burned. "Yes. Is that so impossible to believe?"
He arched a brow, his lips twitching into something dangerously close to a smirk. "Impossible? No. Implausible? Absolutely. Emberly, you've never set foot in a kitchen. Suddenly you're wielding knives like you've been practicing?"
The word "knife" landed in her chest like a weight. Images from the dream flashed in her mind, and she forced a shaky laugh. "I just started watching cooking videos. It caught my interest."
Kyle studied her for a long moment, his eyes narrowing slightly. Then he stepped closer. Each movement was deliberate, unhurried, but heavy with purpose.
The air thickened as he stopped just before her. His height, his presence, his scent—it was overwhelming. Astrid's pulse quickened, her lips parting slightly as her breath caught.
Kyle's gaze locked on hers, and for a suspended second, the world seemed to stop. His face dipped closer, his voice low enough to stir the air between them.
"Strange," he murmured. "You're not the same."
Her chest tightened. Did he know? Could he somehow sense that the woman before him was no longer Emberly but Astrid—an intruder in borrowed skin?
But before she could react, he pulled away, moving to his side of the bed as though nothing had happened.
Astrid exhaled sharply, relief mingling with something far more dangerous. Heat burned beneath her skin, not from fear, but from something she dared not name.
She slid beneath the covers, her body tense, trying to carve out space on her side. But before she could retreat fully, Kyle's hand wrapped around her waist, pulling her back against him in one effortless motion.
Her breath hitched as her body collided with his. Every line of his frame pressed against her—the heat of him, the strength, the raw presence that made her feel small and exposed.
"You're tense," Kyle murmured, his lips brushing her ear, his voice rich with amusement.
His hand moved, slow and deliberate, tracing the curve of her waist before inching upward. The fabric of her nightgown shifted under his touch, and her body betrayed her with a sharp inhale.
Kyle chuckled softly, low and knowing. "Relax," he teased. "I'm not going to bite. Unless, of course, you want me to."
Her pulse stuttered. She couldn't answer. She couldn't even breathe.
Finally, his hand settled back on her waist, his grip firm but no longer wandering. Within moments, his breathing evened, his body sinking into the rhythm of sleep.
Astrid, however, lay wide awake, her heart still racing.
The echo of Emberly's nightmare throbbed in her chest—the knife, the blood, the scar. She thought of the man now wrapped around her, of the storm he carried beneath his calm surface, of the way his touch both terrified and ignited her.
She didn't know which unsettled her more: the memory of a past that wasn't hers, or the dangerous possibility of a future that could be