Elena POV:

My foot caught on a loose strip of metal on the floor. The sharp clang echoed in the small apartment, and they sprang apart.

Killian turned, his eyes locking on me in the doorway. For a split second, I saw a flicker of something—concern, maybe even guilt—before it was swallowed by pure annoyance.

“Elena? What the hell are you doing here?”

Dallas stepped out from behind him, a sickly sweet smile stretched across her face. Her voice was pure performance.

“Oh, Elena. I am so, so sorry for… you know. High school. We were just kids.”

“Don't,” I bit out, the single word cutting through her act like a shard of glass.

Her face crumpled instantly. She turned and melted against Killian’s chest, her shoulders shaking with theatrical sobs.

“I was just trying to be nice.”

Killian’s arms wrapped around her protectively, his glare hardening as it landed on me.

“What is your problem? Just leave it alone.”

My mind flashed back to the high school locker room. Dallas and her friends had held me down, the cold, sharp point of a compass digging into the soft skin of my wrist as she had carved the word “Worthless” into my flesh. The scar was still there, a pale, jagged line I saw every single day.

I remembered Killian finding me crying in the library afterward. He had taken my hand, his thumb tracing the angry red mark, and had promised me, his voice a low growl, “One day, I'll ruin her for you, Elena. I swear it.”

Another beautiful, empty lie.

“Get in the car,” Killian commanded, his voice leaving no room for argument.

Dallas chimed in, wiping away a non-existent tear. “Yes, let's all go together. We can be friends.”

She reached for my arm, her perfectly manicured nails sinking deliberately into the sensitive skin around my old scar.

Pain, sharp and familiar, shot up my arm. I flinched back on instinct, yanking away from her touch.

My recoil sent her stumbling backward. She went down with a dramatic gasp, collapsing onto the floor in a heap, and for all the world, it looked as if I had shoved her.

Elena POV:

Killian didn't hesitate. He was at Dallas’s side in an instant, his entire focus on her, effectively turning his back on me.

“Are you okay? Did she hurt you?”

“I just startled her,” Dallas whimpered, her voice a masterful performance of trembling fragility. “I don't know why she's so angry.”

Killian’s fury ignited. He spun on me, his face twisting into a mask of cold rage. “What the hell is wrong with you? You’d attack her over some stupid high-school grudge?”

“She bullied me, Killian,” I tried to explain, my voice shaking. “She gave me this scar.” I thrust my wrist forward, but his gaze never left Dallas.

“That was years ago. Kids are cruel,” he dismissed, his tone laced with ice.

Dallas placed a delicate hand on his arm, a soft, manipulative gesture that only seemed to fuel his anger toward me.

My bag had fallen during the commotion, spilling its contents across the dusty floor. I dropped to my knees to scramble for the few mementos I had of Leo—a worn photograph, a small, lopsided clay bird he’d made for me in art class.

“Here, let me help,” Dallas said, her voice dripping with saccharine concern. She bent down, her fingers closing around the little clay bird.

And then she crushed it.

I watched, frozen, as the last thing Leo ever made for me crumbled into dust between her fingers.

A scream tore from my throat, a sound of pure grief and rage. I lunged at her, my vision blurred by tears.

Killian shoved me away.

Hard.

I stumbled backward, my wrist connecting with the hard edge of the doorframe with a sickening crack. Pain exploded up my arm.

He scoffed, looking down at the gray dust on the floor that had once been a bird. “It was a stupid bird, Elena. I'll buy you a hundred more.”

He didn't remember. He had completely forgotten that Leo made it for me.

That piece of clay was worth more than his entire empire, and he didn't even know it.

Elena POV:

Exhausted and numb, I sank into the back of the Maybach. Killian and Dallas sat in the front, their whispered conversation a dull hum I couldn’t bring myself to process. I felt invisible, a ghost in the backseat of my own life.

I replayed every instance of Dallas's cruelty, every single torment Killian had dismissed as a misunderstanding or a harmless prank. He had never seen it. He had never wanted to see it.

The world outside was a blur of city lights until a sudden, blinding glare filled the car. A large truck, its horn blaring, slammed into the passenger side of the Maybach with a deafening shriek of twisting metal.

The car crumpled like a tin can. Airbags deployed with a violent hiss. My head snapped back against the headrest, and the side window shattered, showering my face in shards.

I felt a warm trickle of blood trace a path from a cut on my forehead.

Killian’s first and only instinct was to protect Dallas. He threw his body over hers, shielding her from the impact, frantically checking her for injuries. He didn’t so much as glance into the rearview mirror.

He wrenched his door open and pulled a whimpering Dallas from the wreckage, shouting for medics, his entire focus on her.

My vision blurred. My head was pounding, and a thick knot of shock and grief in my throat kept me from calling out his name.

Through the shattered window, I watched him carry Dallas toward the flashing lights of an ambulance without a single backward glance, without a single thought for me.

Before the darkness pulled me under, I remembered a promise he’d made on a starry night years ago, his lips against my ear.

“No matter what happens, Elena. I will always choose you.”

I woke up in a sterile white hospital room. The air was thick with a cloyingly sweet scent. The room was filled with peonies, massive bouquets of them on every surface.

A flower I am violently allergic to.

A fact he once knew as well as he knew his own name.