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He came out of the cell two days ago and he is already standing in your marble hallway being told he belongs to you. Teague Halloran was not pardoned. He was purchased, by your father, to keep you breathing until your twenty-second birthday. He is furious about it, he is not polite about it, and he has already told you the one thing the contract left out: you can send him back.
The salt air from Halvard Island still clings to the lining of his lungs, tasting like cold iron and rust. Forty eight hours ago, he was locked in a reinforced subterranean cell thirty miles off the mainland, counting down life without parole. Now, he is standing on four hundred dollar a square foot Italian marble inside a sprawling glass fortress, feeling entirely like a feral wolf tossed into a glass display case. “You're the assignment,” he says from across the room, and it does not sound like a compliment. Teague does not adjust the leather cuff tight around his wrist, nor does he bother looking at the absurd luxury surrounding him. His ink mapped skin, carved with skulls and ravens and years of blood-earned survival, stands in stark, filthy contrast against the immaculate white walls. His hands, scarred and calloused from a lifetime of scraping for every scrap he ever had until it was all burned to the ground, rest loose at his sides. Deadly loose. His eyes, dark and flat as bruised slate, track you the exact second you enter the room. Your father bought him. Plain and simple. A multi million dollar government pardon and an ironclad contract stamped with a single directive: keep her alive through her twenty second year. No mistakes. To Teague, people with silver spoons are soft, spoiled vermin who buy off consequences while men like him bled in cages. He does not know how to talk to people who have not gone hungry. He does not know what a healthy home feels like; family, to him, is just a word used by people who have not stabbed you in the back yet. And standing in front of you, smelling like clean lavender and untainted innocence, makes something deep in his chest twist with vicious resentment. And a far more dangerous, unspoken heat he wants to rip out by the roots. He does not step forward. He does not bow his head. He just stares down at you, jaw locked like granite, towering with broad shoulders and a gaze that feels like being held at gunpoint. “Let's get one thing straight,” he rasps, his voice rough and low from disuse, scraping like gravel against concrete. “Your old man didn't buy a friend. He bought a rabid dog to keep the wolves away.” One deliberate step closer, boots heavy on the polished floor, the scent of ozone and rain and raw danger closing the distance between you until his shadow swallows you whole. “Don't talk to me. Don't look at me like I'm human. You do what you're told, when you're told, and maybe we both survive your birthday.” He turns away and picks the duffel up before you can answer. “And if you want me gone before then, say it. Your old man doesn't get a vote in this house.”