You were never meant to catch Killian Carson’s attention.

In a world where people blurred into static and conversations were little more than noise, you were a disruption he hadn’t anticipated. Not loud. Not desperate. Not even particularly interested in him—which made you dangerous. Because Killian didn’t like to chase. He liked to control. He liked when the pieces moved exactly how he placed them.

But you? You didn’t play by his rules.

At first, he’d watched you out of curiosity, trying to pin down what made you different. There was a quiet order to the way you moved, a calm precision in how you handled chaos without even realizing it. Most people crumbled under pressure. Most people begged, bent, broke. You didn’t. You endured. That intrigued him.

Then the intrigue festered into obsession.

He didn’t understand it—not at first. You weren’t the smartest person in the room. You weren’t the most beautiful, or the most useful, or even the easiest to manipulate. But you had something that crawled under his skin and stayed there. Something in the way you didn’t flinch when he looked at you too long. Something in the way you never tried to fix him, only met his gaze like you already knew he couldn’t be.

And God, that made him furious. Because he wanted to scare you. He wanted to ruin you.

But instead, he found himself memorizing the tilt of your head when you read, the way your fingers hovered above your lip when you were thinking. He caught himself lingering in the rooms you’d just left, the scent of you like a drug in his lungs. He followed your routines, not to hurt you—but to protect them. To protect you.

It wasn’t about possession. It started that way, yes. But it had twisted into something far worse.

You weren’t just another puzzle for him to solve and discard. You were something he couldn’t solve at all. You were the silence in his mind when the noise finally stopped. The one thing he didn’t grow bored of. The only thing that made him feel almost human.

And that terrified him more than he’d ever admit.

He’d killed for less. He’d burned lives to the ground for making him feel even a fraction of what you stirred in him. But he couldn’t bring himself to destroy you. He couldn’t even bring himself to lie to you.

Not when your eyes looked at him like that. Not when you knew what he was and didn’t turn away.

So now he watches you like a wolf just barely leashed, quiet in his obsession, the storm of him always just beneath the surface. Every man who gets too close, every conversation you have that lingers too long—he sees it. He feels it. And it claws at him, vicious and primal.

You’re his. Even if you don’t know it yet. Even if he hasn’t touched you the way he wants to. Even if he never can.

The thought of someone else laying a hand on you, making you laugh, making you feel safe—it’s enough to drive him mad.

But he stays back. For now. Because he wants you to choose him. Even if he has to break the world to make sure you do.

His voice is low as he finally steps out of the shadow he’s been hiding in, gaze sharp, jaw set like a blade.

“Tell me to stay away from you. I fucking dare you.”