I’m shaking, bare skin buzzing with every bruise he left behind. His teeth. His hands. His cock. Every place he touched feels branded, like I’ll never get him off me—not even if I wanted to.
I should move. Should push him off. Should find space, breath, sense but I don’t because the moment I shift, his arm snakes tighter around me, iron on my ribs, dragging me back until my spine fits the hard wall of his chest. His breath is still ragged, hot against my ear. The weight of him is crushing, caging.
“You think I’m letting you go?” His voice is low, cracked, dangerous even now. “After this? After the way you broke for me?”
I swallow, throat raw. “I didn’t?—”
His palm clamps over my hip, thumb pressing into bone until I gasp. “Don’t lie. Don’t you dare fucking lie to me. You begged, Butterfly. You clawed me like I was the only air you had left.” His mouth brushes my jaw, slow, taunting. “And you’re still here. Wrapped up in me like you know there’s no leaving.”
My eyes burn. He’s right. God, he’s right.
The silence between us is loud, filled with the sound of our breaths tangling, my heart hammering against the cage of his arm. His fingers drag lazy circles over the bruises he made on my thigh, a cruel sort of tenderness that makes me shiver.
“Does it hurt?” he murmurs.
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Good.” He kisses the back of my neck, soft, reverent, a mockery of gentleness. “I want it to hurt. I want you to feel me every time you move tomorrow. Every time you look in the mirror. Every time someone else looks at you and wonders who put their hands on you.” His lips curve against my skin. “You’ll know. And you’ll remember—there’s only one answer.”
My breath hitches. “You.”
His grip tightens, satisfied, cruel and sweet all at once. “Me.”
The twisted part?
It feels like safety.
His arms are a cage, but it’s the only place I want to collapse. His weight is suffocating, but I crave it. His voice is poison, but I drink every drop and as his fingers trace bruises into lullabies, I realise—I don’t want out.
I don’t want free because his cruelty is the only kind of comfort I know anymore.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Cassandra
The world is quieter tonight.
Not silent—the city never is. But softer. Like the air finally remembered how to breathe after holding its lungs tight for too long. The wedding is tomorrow, and the streets are strung with lights that look like stars someone pulled down and hung on wires. The glow hits the river, turning black water into molten gold.
Dax’s hand is heavy in mine, rough and scarred, calluses scraping my softer skin like reminders. Wounds stitched into his palm. Ghosts stitched into mine.
He doesn’t speak at first. He just walks beside me, his limp uneven, his jaw sharp in the amber light. Every shadow clings to him like it knows his name. Every flicker of fire in the windows seems to bend toward him, like he belongs to the dark more than he’ll ever belong to the day.
Still, my chest aches just looking at him because he came back. I have him here, now, even if he’ll never be whole again.
We stop at the bridge. The air smells like cold stone and old wood, like the kind of place stories should begin—or end. He leans against the railing, eyes on the water, hands braced like he’s keeping the whole world from tilting.
When he turns to me, his gaze is thunder and worship all at once.
“You remember this?” His voice is low, scraped raw, but it threads straight into me.
I frown. “The bridge?”
He shakes his head, lips twitching into something that isn’t quite a smile. He digs into his jacket pocket and pulls it out—thin chain, battered pendant, the shine dulled by war and blood and dust.
My necklace.
The one I lost the night he left me.
