The words felt heavier than the city outside.
He turned.
Slowly.
The light caught the harsh planes of his face.
Made him look carved out of something colder than stone.
Something older.
Something hungrier.
His eyes dragged down my body. Not lasciviously. Not cruelly. Just—assessing. Measuring. The way a butcher measures cuts. The way a king measures sacrifices.
“You can stand,” Wolfe said. “And leave.”
A beat.
Soft.
Surgical.
“You can walk out that door. Pretend none of this mattered.”
He paused.
Let the lie hang in the air between us.
Because we both knew—I would never pretend again.
“Or—”
“You can kneel.”
And in that moment—with the lights of the city flickering like false gods behind him—I knew what devotion really looked like.
Not prayer. Not forgiveness. Just this. One breath. One kneel. One surrender so absolute it rewrote who I thought I was.
Another pause. Sharper. Colder.
“And stay.”
My chest tightened. Pain flared through my ribs. Through my knees. Through the hollow places inside me that used to hold dreams bigger than breath and bruises.
I sank to my knees. Slow. Deliberate. Pain cracking like fire across my body. I bowed my head. Pressed my palms to my thighs. Felt the leash tighten around my lungs. And I stayed.
Breathing.
Bleeding.
Belonging.
Exactly where I was meant to be.
Wolfe didn’t praise. Didn’t touch. He just turned away. Silent. Final. And left me kneeling in the middle of a glass palace built on ashes and ruin. Smiling. Not because I wanted to.
Because I finally understood—belonging was the only kind of survival left. Because love never asked anything of me.
