Outside, the last of the gunfire fades. Shouts echo through the halls, boots pounding as my men finish the intruders. I count the seconds, listening for any hint of threat.
Then it’s over.
The mansion smells of blood and gunpowder, sharp and raw. I sag against the wall, Clara pressed close, her hands still over my wound. We’re both shaking.
I hold her tighter, letting the adrenaline burn itself out, and know with sick certainty that I’d walk through a thousand more nights like this—bleeding, broken, wild—if it meant keeping her alive.
The room stinks of smoke, sweat, blood, and the aftershock of violence. Clara kneels beside me on the cold floor, her hands shaking as she tears a strip from her nightgown and presses it hard against the wound on my arm. My shirt is soakedthrough, and the pain burns deep, but the heat of her skin against mine burns hotter.
I grit my teeth and hold still, letting her tend to me as sirens wail distantly, men shout orders, and the taste of gunpowder still lingers in the air.
Clara’s eyes are wide, pupils blown with panic, but there’s a steadiness there too. Her fingers are clumsy but determined, working to slow the bleeding, her hair falling into her face. I watch her, unable to look away. The adrenaline is wearing off, leaving only exhaustion, pain—and the sharp, living terror of nearly losing her.
When her trembling fingers brush my jaw, wiping a streak of blood from my cheek, something in me threatens to break. I want to lean in, to taste the salt on her lips, to drown myself in the life I nearly lost tonight. My hand finds her wrist, thumb brushing over her frantic pulse.
She doesn’t pull away. For a moment, time hangs suspended, the world shrinking to the space between us, her breath mingling with mine. Every part of me aches to close the distance, to finally take what I’ve denied myself for too long.
I force myself to stop. The words tear out of me, rougher than I intend, because I need her to understand. “You deserve a better man than me.”
She freezes. Her lips part, confusion and something softer flickering in her gaze. Not fear. Never fear. It’s something that makes my chest ache worse than any wound.
“You don’t mean that,” she whispers, voice trembling.
I shake my head. “I do. After tonight… you saw what I am.”
She looks at me—really looks—and I see her anger, her stubbornness, her courage. I also see forgiveness, maybe even tenderness, and it terrifies me more than the bullets ever could.
She doesn’t say anything else. She just sits with me until the bleeding stops, her hand firm on my arm, her eyes on my face. The fire of her presence undoes me in ways violence never could.
***
Later, when the shooting stops and my men sweep the grounds for survivors, I limp through the mansion, refusing to let the medic patch me up until I’ve seen her safely to her room. I check every corner, every broken window, every body sprawled on the marble floor. I bark orders, my voice hoarse from shouting, my rage barely contained.
The last intruder is dead. The last of the fires are stamped out. Nikolai’s men begin hauling bodies out the side doors, scrubbing blood from the floors. The sun isn’t up yet, but I feel the dawn pressing at the horizon, washing pale light through the smoke-streaked glass.
I pause at a window, breath fogging the cracked pane. Outside, rain has started to fall, washing blood from the garden stones.
I catch Clara’s reflection in the glass. She stands a few feet behind me, wrapped in a blanket, her face pale and smudged with soot. Her eyes find mine in the reflection—alive, burning, defiant.
I should feel relief. Instead, my heart pounds, hollow and uncertain. She’s alive because of me—because I fought for her, bled for her, killed for her without hesitation.
In that moment, it’s not victory I taste. It’s fear. The knowledge that if anything happened to her, I would burn theworld to the ground. That I’ve given up every last scrap of control to a woman who refuses to bend.
My men think she’s my weakness. They’re wrong. She’s the only reason I’m still standing.
She comes closer, pausing at my side. I keep my gaze fixed on her reflection.
“You’re safe,” I say, the words rasping out low.
Her hand finds my shoulder, light as a question, grounding me. “You too,” she answers quietly.
We stand there in silence, watching dawn creep in through the battered window, the house still shuddering from the violence of the night. I want to reach for her, to hold her until the shaking stops, but I don’t. Instead, I let myself feel the terror, the fury, the fierce, possessive love I’ve spent too long denying.
When she finally slips away to sleep, I remain at the window, watching the grounds, counting the cost. I replay every second—her scream, the blood, the fear in her eyes when I was hit. I let myself remember what it felt like to almost lose her.
I swear a silent oath to the sunrise that whoever sent those men—whoever thought they could take her from me—will pay in blood.
No one touches what’s mine. Not while I draw breath.
