Please.
From him, it isn’t softness. It’s something far more devastating.
I twist in his hold. He’s still wild, pupils blown, but behind the feral hunger there’s something else. Something stripped bare. Something only I ever get to see.
I cup his jaw, my thumb brushing the stubble. He leans into it, eyes closing for a second.
“Yes, Priest. I’ll marry you.”
His eyes open slowly. And what looks back at me is hunger, yes. Possession, yes. But also something so raw it aches. Something like fear. Relief.
It’s love. Twisted and vicious andhis.
His thumb traces my cheekbone. “We’re the same kind of ruined. And I can’t survive this world without you. I don’t even want to.”
His hand slips back to my stomach, fingers spreading protectively over the small curve that’s just beginning to form.
“I need you, Arlo. More than I’ve ever needed anything.”
My chest tightens so sharply it hurts.
He pulls me closer, “I know what I am. I know the things I’ve done. I know the things the Sovereign will demand I do. I knowI hurt. I know I break. But you—” His breath shudders. “You’re the one thing I can’t lose.”
I curl my fingers in the lapels of his tux jacket, pulling him down, kissing him.
And when his lips drag down the line of my throat, when his arm curls under my stomach to hold me close, when his breath stirs against my skin as he whispers my name…
I know one thing with absolute certainty:
He needs me. And I need him. Not in the way normal people love. Not gently. Not quietly. But wholly. Darkly. Dangerously.
Like survival.
He tucks himself back in and pulls my dress down with more gentleness than he’s shown all night.
He moves to the sink, and I watch him in the mirror. He splashes cold water on his face, droplets clinging to his lashes, running down the hard line of his jaw. He meets my reflection in the glass, and for a heartbeat, the blue in his eyes is just blue—not a weapon, not a void, but a color.
“We have to go.”
I push myself upright, my body still humming. I smooth my gown, my fingers tracing the velvet. “Let’s not keep them waiting.”
The hall is gold and crimson. Too much. Everything about Sovereign always is.
A high chandelier blazes overhead. The Council members stand like monuments at the edge of the raised dais. Cameras are tucked behind pillars, silent eyes watching.
A hush falls when Priest steps in. A ripple of tension follows. The strange pull of reverence and fear. The Sovereign heir who wasn’t raised to rule. Twenty-nine years old, the youngest in the Sovereign’s history.
He doesn’t slow. Doesn’t pause to acknowledge the eyes, the whispers, the masked advisors with clipped nods and cold smiles.
I trail behind him, keeping to the edge of the stage as a masked Council Member steps forward and begins the rites. Words I don’t care about. Oaths I don’t believe in.
We were never supposed to be here.
The Sovereign stole everything from us.
It carved my father into something unrecognizable. It buried Priest alive in a cage of violence and numbers and chains.
Priest walks to the center of the dais without hesitation, but I see that flicker of rage beneath his calm. The still-simmering hatred burning behind his eyes. He hates them.All of them.
