Chapter 7
Siena’s POV)
The choker still burned against my skin. Not literally—it was silk, soft, deceptively delicate—but I could feel it there as if it were forged from iron, fused into me.
Damien hadn’t stepped back. His hand was still firm at my jaw, holding me steady as though I might break free and bolt into the night. His eyes never left mine, not even when Elira moved silently into the room, her figure cutting across the pale wash of moonlight that spilled from the glass wall.
Behind her, the stranger entered.
At first, he was only a silhouette. Broad shoulders, tall, his steps measured in that careful way of someone who knew too much about danger. His face was turned away, the shadows swallowing him whole.
But my chest tightened. I knew that presence. The shape of it. The pull of memory is cruel—it drags things up from the deepest part of you, even when you want to bury them forever.
My knees threatened to give out.
Damien’s grip on me tightened, steadying, as though he sensed how badly I wanted to step back. Or maybe he enjoyed it—the way my body betrayed me, trembling against his control.
“Do you recognize him?” Damien’s voice was velvet and steel. Not loud, but inescapable.
I opened my mouth. No sound came.
The stranger finally lifted his head.
Light cut across his features.
And my world broke open.
“Alec,” I whispered.
His name tasted foreign in my mouth, but it was him. My half-brother. The boy I’d once known only in fragments—a photo slipped in an old drawer, whispers my mother never meant me to hear, stories half-swallowed in bitterness. I hadn’t seen him in years, not since we were both children fumbling through different worlds, divided by silence and circumstance.
Yet here he was. In Eden.
Alive.
Changed.
His eyes found me instantly, wide with shock, and then narrowing in something sharper—recognition, fury, something he masked too quickly.
“Siena.” His voice cracked like a whip in the room.
I lurched forward despite myself, but Damien’s hand was still on me, the leash invisible yet unbreakable.
Alec took a step closer. His jaw was set tight, his fists clenched at his sides. There was no softness, no warmth of reunion. Only a cold edge that cut deeper than I wanted to admit.
“What have you done?” he demanded, his eyes locked on Damien now. “She’s a child.”
The words made my chest hollow out. Child. As if I were still the girl left behind. As if I hadn’t been forced to grow up overnight, in this gilded cage.
Damien’s lips curved faintly, a smile that wasn’t one at all. “She is mine.”
The room snapped taut with silence.
Alec’s shoulders stiffened, rage flashing in his eyes. “She will never be yours.”
Damien’s hand slid from my jaw, but he didn’t let go entirely—he trailed his fingers to the choker at my throat, flicking the clasp with a faint metallic click. “Already is.”
My heart lurched.
Alec moved forward, but Elira shifted smoothly into his path, her presence like a blade unsheathed. “Careful,” she murmured. “You’re in Eden. You don’t make threats here.”
“I don’t care where I am.” Alec’s voice was low, lethal. “I came for her.”
Came for me.
The words echoed in my head, colliding with everything I knew, everything I thought impossible. But nothing made sense. If Alec was here, then how? Why? And most importantly—how much danger had he just walked into?
Damien finally released me, stepping back with measured calm. His eyes never left Alec. “You came for her, yet you stand there unarmed, surrounded. Bold. Foolish.”
“I don’t need weapons to tear you down,” Alec said.
I had never seen him like this. The boy I remembered had been quiet, observant, carrying shadows even as a child. But this man—he was fire and steel, every inch of him sharpened into defiance.
Elira’s lips curved, though her gaze stayed cold. “You think courage will save you here?”
“It’s not courage.” Alec’s voice was steady, his eyes flicking to me for the briefest second. “It’s blood.”
The word hit me like a strike. Blood. He meant family. He meant me.
Damien chuckled softly. “Blood is the weakest chain of all. Easily broken. Easily betrayed.”
“Not this one,” Alec bit out.
Their words fell like blades, clashing in the air, but all I could do was stand frozen, caught between them. My chest ached with the force of it—wanting to reach for Alec, terrified of what Damien would do if I did.
I found my voice, trembling. “Why are you here?” I asked Alec.
His eyes softened only slightly when they met mine. “To take you home.”
The words nearly undid me. Home. A place I thought I’d lost forever.
But Damien’s laugh cut through the air, low and merciless. “Home?” His gaze slid to me, then back to Alec. “Do you think she belongs to your world now? She’s already been rewritten. Every day here erases the girl you remember. Soon there will be nothing left for you to rescue.”
“Liar,” Alec spat.
“Truth,” Damien countered, calm as a predator circling prey.
I shook my head desperately. “Don’t—don’t fight. Please.”
Neither of them moved.
The silence that followed was thick, suffocating, until Damien finally tilted his head toward Elira. “Show him what happens to men who think they can steal from me.”
Her eyes gleamed.
Alec didn’t flinch. He looked at me again, his gaze steady, unwavering, as though he could anchor me with it. “Don’t believe him, Siena. Whatever he tells you, whatever he does—remember who you are. Remember us.”
Elira stepped closer, blade-sharp in her movements.
And Damien? Damien only smiled at me, as if this was all part of his design.
Because it was.
Because Eden was never chaos—it was order, his order. And Alec had just walked straight into it.
My pulse thundered so loud I thought it might shatter me.
“Elira,” Damien said softly. “Begin.”
And in that suspended heartbeat, when her hand went to her concealed knife, Alec moved—swift, reckless, unstoppable.
Straight toward me.
