Chapter 5: The Contract's Fine Print

Chapter 5: The Contract's Fine Print

The days following her discovery of Dane's injuries settled into a strange, unspoken routine. Officially, Ellie was coming to his spartan apartment for more "lessons." They’d sit at his small, scarred kitchen table while he, wincing as he moved, would dissect the social dynamics of Blackwood University with a surgeon’s dispassionate skill. He was a brilliant teacher, his observations as sharp and cutting as broken glass.

But the lessons were a pretense, a flimsy cover for the real reason she was there. She brought him takeout, pretending she’d bought too much. She’d re-stock his meager first-aid kit. She was there to see if the bruises on his ribs were fading, if the gash on his arm was healing without infection, if any more of Silas’s thugs had come calling.

Her success with Caleb had become a constant, buzzing annoyance. Her phone, sitting on the table between them, would light up with his name, the cheerful notifications feeling like intrusions from another universe.

Caleb: Thinking of you. That Italian place again Friday?

Caleb: Saw you in the quad today. You looked amazing.

She was trapped in the gilded cage she had begged Dane to help her build. Each text message was another bar locking her in.

“You should answer him,” Dane said one afternoon, his voice flat. He was leaning against the kitchen counter, watching her pointedly ignore the latest vibration from her phone. His bruises had faded to a sickly yellow-green, but he still moved with a guarded stiffness. “This is the part where you consolidate your victory. It’s what you’re paying for.”

Ellie looked up from the page of Dostoevsky she’d been pretending to read. “It doesn’t feel like a victory.”

“What does it feel like?” he challenged, his grey eyes narrowed.

“It feels… empty,” she admitted, the words quiet in the still apartment. “It’s all so polished and perfect. We talk, but we don’t say anything. The date from the other night… it was like watching a movie of a perfect date. It wasn’t real.”

A humorless smile twisted Dane’s lips. “Welcome to their world, Vance. It’s all a performance. You just happen to be the one on stage with him now.”

Her phone buzzed again, insistent. She finally snatched it up and powered it off, the sudden silence in the room feeling monumental. “I don’t want to talk to him right now.”

“Why not?” Dane pushed off the counter, taking a slow step toward her. The air crackled, the pretense of their lessons wearing dangerously thin. “Isn’t this what you wanted? The golden boy’s undivided attention?”

“I don’t know what I wanted,” she shot back, standing to face him, her frustration finally bubbling over. “But this contract is a joke. We’re not talking about Caleb, are we? We’re talking about why you look like you’ve gone ten rounds with a meat grinder and you still won’t tell me if you’re safe!”

“My safety is not part of our arrangement,” he said, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous growl. He was closer now, forcing her to tilt her head back to meet his gaze. The confined space of the apartment suddenly felt suffocating. “This was the deal. I get you the doll, you play with it. End of transaction.”

The casual cruelty of his words, meant to push her away, to hurt her, did the opposite. It ignited a spark of defiance in her chest. “A doll? Is that what you think he is? Or is that what you think I am?” Her voice trembled with a fury that surprised them both. “Is that what you think this is still about? About him? I’ve been coming here every day because I was afraid I’d walk past that alley and find you bleeding out for real this time! Because I was worried about you!”

The confession hung in the air between them, raw and undeniable. It shattered the cynical framework of their contract, leaving only the volatile truth.

Dane froze, the anger in his face faltering, replaced by something wild and uncertain. The armor was gone. The carefully constructed walls of cynicism he hid behind had been breached. He stared down at her, his stormy eyes searching hers, and for the first time, she didn't see a trace of ‘Daemon’ Blackwood. She saw only Dane.

The space between them was no longer measured in feet, but in heartbeats. The scent of motor oil and antiseptic filled her lungs. She could see the faint scar on his jaw, the dark flecks in the grey of his irises. The world narrowed to this single, charged moment. The unspoken tension that had simmered beneath every lesson, every cynical comment, every shared glance, finally reached its boiling point.

He raised a hand, his calloused fingers hovering inches from her cheek. His breath hitched. Her own breath caught in her throat, a silent invitation. This was no longer a game. This was real. He leaned in, his gaze dropping to her lips, and the entire world seemed to hold its breath with her.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

The sound was sharp, confident, and utterly alien against the door of his apartment.

They sprang apart as if electrocuted. Dane’s entire posture shifted in an instant, the vulnerability vanishing, replaced by a coiled, feral readiness. He moved silently, placing himself between Ellie and the door, his body a shield.

“Who is it?” he called out, his voice a low growl.

“Ellie?” The voice that came through the door was smooth, familiar, and catastrophically out of place. “It’s Caleb. Your roommate said you might be here. Is everything okay?”

Ellie’s blood ran cold. Caleb. Here. It was an impossibility, a collision of worlds that should never have touched.

Dane’s eyes locked on hers, a thousand questions passing between them in a split second. Then he looked back at the door, his jaw tight. He gave her a single, sharp nod, a silent command to play along, before pulling the door open.

Caleb Remington stood on the rusted landing, a picture of campus royalty slumming it. He was holding a small bouquet of wildflowers, looking entirely out of place against the backdrop of peeling paint and grime. His easy smile was fixed on his face, but it faltered the moment he took in the scene.

His eyes swept from Ellie’s flushed face to Dane, who was still shirtless, the faint yellowing of his bruises stark against his skin. Caleb’s gaze lingered on the raw, healing gash on Dane’s forearm, then traveled back to Ellie. The polished, charming mask of the golden boy cracked, and for a fleeting second, she saw something else underneath: a flicker of raw, undisguised possession. A flash of green in his bright blue eyes.

Dane saw it, too. He recognized the look of a predator staking its claim. And in that instant, he made a choice.

Slowly, deliberately, Dane let his hand rest on the small of Ellie’s back, a simple, proprietary gesture that staked a claim of his own. It was a declaration of war disguised as an act of comfort. The warmth of his palm seeped through the fabric of her dress, branding her.

“She was just helping me with something,” Dane said, his voice calm, but with an undercurrent of steel that Caleb couldn't miss. “We were just about to head out.”

We.

The word hung in the tense air, redrawing every line of their arrangement. The contract’s fine print had just materialized out of thin air, written in invisible ink, binding them together in a way neither of them had ever intended. Their fake relationship, their calculated game, had just become a very, very real problem. Caleb’s smile was gone completely now, replaced by a cold, assessing stare that measured them both, and Ellie was trapped, frozen, in the silent, suffocating space between two kings from two very different kingdoms.