Pop.
A gunshot cracked through the air. Sharp. Distant.
My pulse exploded.
Another shot followed. Closer this time.
Then another. And another.
The night wasn’t quiet anymore. It was screaming.
And so was my body. Every instinct I had clawed to the surface at once.Run. Get help. Stay down. Hide.But none of those made sense.
Because Silas was inside that house.
I looked at the door handle like it might burn me if I touched it.
And in that moment—heart pounding, every muscle pulled tight, dread thick in my throat—I saw everything I hadn’t let myself want before.
A future.
With him.
I used to say I didn’t believe in forever. That marriage was a luxury for people who didn’t understand how easily it could all fall apart. I built a business on other people’s fairy tales, on rented bliss and curated joy, but I’d kept myself locked out of the narrative. Safe. Separate. In control.
But none of that mattered now.
Not when Silas might be bleeding out on the other side of that door. Not when the man who made me feel more alive than anyone else ever had had walked willingly into a fire to keep others safe.
I loved him.
Not in the pretty, comfortable way the world sold it. Not with brunches and well-lit engagement photos. I loved him in the jagged, breathless way. In the way that remakes you from the inside. In the way that demands something raw and real and terrifying in return.
And I knew—I knew—that if I had to, I would burn the whole world to the ground to get to him.
If he asked, I’d marry him in a heartbeat. No plans, no dresses, no perfectly arranged florals. Just us, and the ashes we’d both crawled through to find one another. I wantedmornings with him, and late nights, and bruised knuckles and laughter that shook our walls. I wanted the messy kind of love, the dangerous kind—the kind you bleed for.
Silas Dane had become my truth. My storm and my shelter.
And I wasn’t going to lose him.
So, I opened the door.
The night air hit me like a slap—briny, laced with smoke. I crouched beside the car, my breathing shallow, trying to see where the shots had come from. But it was impossible. The trees moved too much, and the dark was too thick.
What the hell am I doing?
But I already knew.
I was running toward the door before I could talk myself out of it.
My feet barely made a sound on the gravel, but my heartbeat was a drum in my ears. I passed the oaks, the wrought-iron gate that had been flung open, the body of one of the guards face-down by the hedgerow. I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. There wasn’t time to be afraid.
The porch was slick with dew. The front door hung ajar.
A breath caught in my throat.
I stepped inside.
