I love her.
The truth nearly stops me in my tracks. I love Seraphina—not just her body, not just her submission, not just her defiance. All of her. Every stubborn, infuriating, magnificent inch.
I love her, and that makes her the most dangerous vulnerability I've ever faced.
Because in that moment, watching her with those children, feeling her kiss, I wanted more than I have any right to want. I envisioned a future where a son with her eyes and my shadows calls me father, where family means more than power, where love isn't a weakness but the greatest strength of all.
But some monsters aren't meant to be fathers. Some men are too corrupted, too dangerous, too broken to risk creating new life.
Some futures are too dangerous to contemplate, especially for a man with shadows where his soul should be.
My swift departure feels like retreat, though I tell myself it's strategy. Self-preservation. Protection—not for me, but for her.
For the child that might already be growing inside her, though I refuse to let myself believe it's possible.
I will not become my father. I will not lose control as I did with Julia. I will not destroy what matters most.
Even if that means destroying myself instead.
Behind me, I hear Ivy's voice, pitched low and urgent: "Let me heal that cut before it scars."
And Seraphina's response, barely a whisper: "He didn't mean to. Something's wrong with his shadows. They're unstable."
She's defending me even now. Even after I hurt her. Making excuses for her broken mate.
Which only proves how right I am to walk away.
Before my poison destroys us both.
CHAPTER 31
THE JOURNAL
Seraphina
Ivy's healing magic tingles across my arm as we walk back through the shadow forest, the thin cut already knitting closed. But the wound isn't what troubles me.
"Hold still," Ivy murmurs, her wings beating steadily as she hovers beside me, tiny fingers pressed to the slice Malakai's shadows left behind. "Almost done."
"It's fine. It was barely a scratch."
"It was his shadows losing control." She finishes the healing and pulls back, studying my face with an expression I can't quite read. "That's not fine, Sera."
I don't answer. My mind keeps replaying the moment — the kiss, soft and unhurried, unlike anything we'd shared before. No power struggle, no dominance or submission. Just pure connection. The way he leaned into me like a man starving for tenderness, like no one had ever kissed him with genuine affection before.
And then his whole body going rigid, his eyes distant, seeing something I couldn't see. The shadows exploding outward before he could stop them. The children's screams. Frost crystallizing across the grass. The temperature plummeting so fast my breath turned to mist.
The look of horror on his face when my blood welled up.
"He didn't mean to," I say quietly.
"I know he didn't." Ivy lands on my shoulder, her weight barely perceptible. "That's what worries me."
We walk in silence for a moment, the shadow trees filtering strange twilight through their dark canopy. The forest feels different now — less magical, more ominous. Every shifting shadow makes me flinch, reminds me of the tendril that lashed toward me with razor-sharp intent. He'd diverted it at the last second, but not before it sliced across my arm, leaving a thin line of blood against my skin.
My hand drifts to my stomach — a habit I can't seem to break — before I catch myself and let it fall.
"His shadows have been unstable before," I say. "When he's angry, or?—"
