Devyn is standing in the doorway.
Watching.
His expression gives absolutely nothing away. Not amusement. Not concern. Not even mild curiosity about why his future bride is currently attempting to strangle herself with bedsheets.
One eyebrow lifts. Maybe a millimeter. Maybe less.
I scramble upright with as much dignity as I can muster.
Which is none. Zero dignity. Negative dignity.
"I wasn't—" I gesture vaguely at the bed, the sheets, my own treasonous limbs. "That wasn't—"
He says nothing.
"Gravity," I inform him. "It was a gravity issue."
Still nothing. Just those golden eyes, watching me like I'm a particularly confusing math problem he's been asked to solve.
"Also you should knock," I add, because apparently my mouth has decided to keep going without permission from my brain. "That's a thing people do. Knocking. Before entering rooms. Especially bedrooms. Especially the bedrooms of people they've kidnapped."
His lips twitch.
It's barely there. The ghost of almost-amusement, gone so fast I might have imagined it. But I didn't imagine it. I saw it. Isawit.
Devyn Chaleur, mafia king, legendary temper, banked-coals anger—almost smiled.
At me.
Because I was being ridiculous.
Oh no. Oh no no no.
"The wedding will take place in three days." His tone is clipped now, all business, like the almost-smile never happened. "There's paperwork to complete. Legal formalities."
He's changed out of his wedding suit. Now he's in something simpler: dark trousers, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to hisforearms, the collar open at the throat. The late afternoon light catches the hard line of his jaw, the sharp angles of his face.
He fills the doorframe the way he fills every space he enters. Not just physically, though he is tall, broad-shouldered, built like someone who knows exactly what his body can do. It's more than that. It's presence. It's the absolute certainty that everything around him exists because he allows it to.
Those golden eyes find mine.
My pulse jumps. My breath catches. My whole body goes tight in a way I don't want to examine too closely.
No. Absolutely not.
I am not going to be attracted to the man who literally picked me up and carried me out of a building because I wasn't walking fast enough. The man who just watched me nearly strangle myself with bedsheets and didn't even offer to help. That would be insane. That would be—
He takes a step into the room, and my thoughts scatter like startled birds.
I find my voice somewhere in the wreckage of my composure. "You can't just marry someone. There are laws. You need consent—"
"I need to understand what you are."
The interruption is sharp, efficient. He cuts through my protests like they're inconveniences.
"What Iam?"
"You appeared in my chapel." Another step closer. I can smell him now—cedar and smoke and that warmth underneath—and my knees feel suddenly unreliable. "At the exact moment my bride vanished. You refused to tell me where she went. You gave me nothing but silence and defiance."
