The fragile truce born in the aftermath of the nightmare didn't last. It couldn't. The compound wasn't built for tenderness; it was built for containment. Rafe retreated into a new, more subtle form of distance. He wasn't cold, but he was careful—painfully, excruciatingly careful. He would meet her eyes across the dining table, a brief, unspoken acknowledgment of the night she'd spent on his floor, before his gaze would shutter and slide away. He was a man walking a razor's edge, terrified of falling into the abyss of what he felt for her.
Yasmine felt the withdrawal like a physical chill. The kiss in the utility room, the shared vulnerability in the dark—they were now ghosts haunting the sun-drenched corridors, making the present feel hollow. She threw herself into the routines, into her sessions with Dr. Anya, into listening to Leo's plans for a mural on the bland courtyard wall. She was trying to build a life on sand, and she knew it.
It was on one of those hollow, bright afternoons that Mireya returned.
There was no fanfare this time. No arrival at the docks. She was just there, emerging from the shadowed colonnade as Yasmine returned from a supervised walk along the cliff path with Gareth. She looked like she'd been waiting.
"Yasmine," Mireya said, her voice a smooth, cultured instrument. "A word?"
Gareth glanced between them, his expression neutral. "I'll be in the security office," he said, a tacit permission. Or a dismissal.
Mireya led the way, not back into the villa, but down a narrower, steeper path that branched off from the main one. It wound down the cliff face, away from the compound's view, to a rocky promontory that jutted out over the sea. Here, the wind was a constant, keening force, whipping their hair and clothes. Below, the water churned against jagged black rocks, spewing white foam into the air. It was a place for harsh truths and no witnesses.
Mireya leaned against a weather-worn bench bolted to the stone, looking out at the horizon. "He's pulling away from you," she stated, not looking at Yasmine. "You feel it, don't you? That cold space where his attention used to be."
Yasmine said nothing. Admitting it felt like a betrayal.
"It's not you," Mireya continued, a hint of something almost like pity in her tone. "It's his programming. The closer he gets to something real, something soft, the more his instincts scream to destroy it. To destroy the threat to his own numbness." She finally turned, her hazel eyes sharp. "He'll ruin you. Not out of malice, but out of a broken, reflexive need to protect himself from feeling anything at all."
"You don't know him," Yasmine said, the defense weak even to her own ears.
A bitter, elegant smile touched Mireya's lips. "I knew him when he was Kael. When he had a soul that wasn't just scar tissue." She pushed off the bench and took a step closer. The wind caught her perfume, something expensive and icy. "We were partners. In every sense of the word. We bled together. We held each other's pieces together after missions that would have shattered anyone else. I know the shape of every one of his fractures because I'm the one who helped him set the bones."
She reached into the inner pocket of her tailored blazer and withdrew a small, worn photograph. She held it out.
Yasmine took it, her fingers cold.
The photo was a snapshot, slightly blurred, taken in what looked like a café in some sun-drenched, foreign city. A younger Rafe—Kael—sat at a small table, his face turned up towards the camera, laughing. It was a laugh she had never seen, unburdened and bright. His arm was slung around the shoulders of the woman beside him.
The woman was beautiful, with a cloud of dark hair and a wide, joyful smile. And she had Yasmine's eyes. The same shape, the same unusual shade of sea-green. The resemblance was uncanny, a punch to the gut.
"Her name was Elara," Mireya said softly, watching Yasmine's face crumble. "She was an asset. A linguist. Sweet, brilliant, naive. Kael was assigned as her protector. And he fell for her. Hard. Just like he's falling for you." Mireya's voice hardened. "The Covenant doesn't like it when their weapons develop sentimental attachments. It makes them unstable. Predictable."
"What happened to her?" Yasmine whispered, unable to tear her eyes from the laughing, dead woman who shared her face.
"The mission went wrong. A simple extraction turned into an ambush. Kael had to choose—complete the objective or save her." Mireya's gaze was merciless. "He chose her. He broke protocol, compromised the operation, and went rogue to get her out. He almost succeeded."
Yasmine's heart was a block of ice in her chest. "Almost?"
"They were cornered at an extraction point. She was shot. She died in his arms, on a rainy dock not unlike the one in Virelune." Mireya's words were precise, surgical. "The Covenant recovered him. He was… non-functional for months. I was the one who put him back together. I reminded him of what he was: a tool. A weapon. Feelings are a flaw in the steel. Love is a critical malfunction."
She plucked the photograph from Yasmine's numb fingers. "He sees her in you. That's all this is. A ghost, a pattern his broken mind recognizes. You're not a person to him, Yasmine. You're a echo of his greatest failure. And he will either destroy you trying to save you, just like he did with her, or the Covenant will remove you when you make him useless to them. Either way, you end up broken or dead."
Mireya tucked the photo away, her mission accomplished. "I'm telling you this not to be cruel, but to spare you. What you're feeling? That pull? It's not a future. It's a death sentence. Walk away. Be the ghost you're supposed to be. For your sake, and for what's left of his."
She turned and walked back up the path, leaving Yasmine alone on the promontory with the screaming wind and the crashing waves.
The ground had indeed crumbled. Everything she'd felt—the electric connection, the possessive heat, the tender vulnerability—it was all refracted through a new, horrifying lens. Was she just a replacement? A living memorial to a dead woman? Was his "protection" just a doomed attempt to rewrite an old tragedy?
The kiss tasted like ashes. His nightmare had a name: Lia. Short for Elara.
She looked down at the violent sea, the spray stinging her eyes like tears. Mireya's gift was poison, but it felt like truth. The cage was not just made of glass-topped walls and locked doors. It was made of his past, his guilt, and the ghost of a woman with her eyes. And she was trapped inside it with him, a living, breathing reminder of everything he'd lost and everything he was destined to fail again.