I had to stop her. Because if she did, I wouldn’t hesitate. I’d follow her through that door and into her bed. And gods help me, I wasn’t ready for her. I knew myself too well. I’d run. And I’d leave her in ruin.
There was no logic left in my skull. Only her.
She blinked. “What?”
And those damn tears filled her eyes, green and endless and wrecked. I was drowning in them.
A shout split the quiet. It was Andri, her father. His boots slammed over the wooden flooring. He barreled past me, yanking her behind him like I was the monster at the door.
“You can’t take her,” he snarled. “Tell your father the bargain is over.”
“I didn’t come to take her.”
But then her voice shattered inside my head.He’s dead. He’s dead.
Andri’s stare bore into me. He knew who I was. What I wanted. And gods, after the thoughts I’d just had of her in that nightgown, I probably deserved to die for it.
“Why are you here?” he demanded.
I swallowed. “I came to tell you that your son, Klaus, was my friend.” A breath hitched in my chest. “And he’s dead.”
“I know,” he said. Then the door slammed in my face.
I stood there in the freezing dark, shadows twitching at my fingertips, grief coiled tight around my throat like a collar.
She didn’t even know.
But he did?
Klaus once told me his father was terrifying on most days, but I’ll admit, having a seven-foot man shout in your face really cements the memory. Still, I didn’t move. Not at first. Because right then, I learned three things.
First, I’d never let Damien or Kian marry her.
Second, Severyn Blanche would hate me for what I just told her.
And third, I wanted her. Not just tonight. Not just once. I wanted her to be mine. Only mine.
And in the end, I was. At least, that’s what Klaus’s Seeker journals claimed. I’d take her, brand her as mine, and destroy her in the same breath.
There was one last story he wrote about us. The undoing of it all. Maybe that was the curse—knowing parts of it and wanting it anyway.
Still, I hoped tonight was the beginning of her unraveling. Because if I was the villain in her story, at least I’d be written into every page. I’d be the shadow at her back, the fire in her blood, the name she could never quite forget.
And the story he started about us? He never finished it.
But I will, even if it means becoming the thing she has to destroy.
Even if it means we burn before the last chapter ends.
