His voice cuts through me, low, cold, commanding.
I freeze. My spine stiffens. I don’t face him. I can’t.
“I won’t apologize for protecting you.”
I turn slowly, the words striking something deep and sharp inside me.
“Is that what you think this is about?” My voice trembles, not from fear—but fury. “You killed for me. Again. In front of all of them. You made it war.”
His jaw tightens, but he doesn’t look away.
“You don’t get to decide what I need protecting from, Misha. You don’t get to drag me into your blood-soaked crusade and then call it love.”
He steps forward, but I hold my ground.
“You want to protect me?” I continue, breath ragged. “Then stop using me to justify your rage. You want vengeance for Stepan? Fine. But don’t pretend it’s just for me. Don’t hide behind me to do what you’ve always wanted.”
A beat of silence.
He looks like I’ve slapped him. And maybe I have.
“Every time I close my eyes, I see blood. Yours, his, mine. I’m drowning in it. And you...” I inhale sharply, “you’re the only thing keeping me breathing, and the one pulling me under.”
His silence stretches, darker now. He’s unraveling. Quietly. Beautifully. Dangerously.
Finally, he says, “Then let me drown with you.”
As I turn to leave, a chill snakes through the air. But then—he’s there.
Misha’s hand shoots out, curling around my wrist, pulling me back towards him, his grip firm but not cruel. The force of it makes my breath catch.
“Luna.” His voice, low and dangerous, carries the weight of something much darker than anger.
I try to pull away, but he’s too strong, too steady. He doesn’t shout, doesn’t demand, I’ve heard him do that before. This time, there’s an edge of something else, something quieter, more insistent.
“You think I don’t see it?” His words are a rasp against the quiet, against my resistance. “You think I don’t see what’s broken inside you?”
I refuse to look at him. I can’t. The weight of his eyes is too much. His touch is burning into my skin, leaving marks that won’t heal. His fingers tighten, a subtle pressure, reminding me that he has the power to stop me from leaving, from running. And he will.
I try to jerk away, but he pulls me closer, until I’m standing between his knees, the heat of him radiating against me.
“I know what it’s like to be haunted by something you didn’t choose,” he murmurs. “But you’re not alone in it anymore.”
“I don’t want you in it,” I whisper. “I don’t want anyone in it.”
“That’s not a choice you get to make anymore,” he says, voice harder now, but not cold. Just resolute. “Because you’re in my world, Luna. You stepped into it the moment you became my wife. And this world doesn’t forgive women who look fragile.”
He releases my wrist slowly, but doesn’t step away. “I don’t kill for sport. Not even for Stepan. Not really.”
I finally look up at him, and there’s something raw in his expression. Something buried beneath the blood and brutality.
“I killed those men because they betrayed us. Because the second they thought you were mine, they tried to break you to get to me. I needed them to know what happens when anyone even thinks of touching what’s mine.”
I inhale sharply.
“It’s not about vengeance,” he says. “It’s about survival. It’s about power. About proving to every man in that room that ifthey so much as breathe wrong in your direction, they’ll lose everything.”
My chest tightens. “And what do I lose, Misha?”
