“I know they don’t trust me, but I’ll make them,” she murmurs
I go still. “Who?”
She shakes her head the tiniest bit against me. “Your men.”
My brows raise. “Ourmen are waiting outside this room to see you.”
She looks up at me. “They are?”
I brush my mouth against her temple. “They are.”
Her lips twitch.
I close my eyes and hold her while the machines beep and the room hums and the fear slowly,slowlybegins to unclench its fists around my throat.
“They can see you later though,” I tell her softly. “I’m not leaving this room.”
She doesn’t answer right away. For a second I think maybe she drifted off again.
Then she murmurs, “Still not marrying you.”
I smile into her hair.
“We’ll see, Beda.”
Her breathing evens out against me. The fight to stay awake leaves her body inch by inch, but I know better than to mistake that for surrender. Ayla doesn’t surrender. She survives. She bites. She comes back sharper.
I look down at her and feel it settle, heavy and final, somewhere deeper than bone.
Ayla.My Beda.Chaos in my house. Chaos in my bed. Chaos in my blood.
She tore through my life like a lit match dropped into gasoline. And now there is no version of this world I want if she isn’t in it.
I drag my mouth over her hair and close my eyes. I was never a man made for soft, but I understand simple.
She’s mine.
She’s the only thing in this world that can take me apart with her bare hands.
And I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure no one else gets close enough to try and take that away from me again.
Chapter 61
Epilogue
One Month Later
The motorcycle hums beneath me, steady and alive, the vibration running up through my thighs and into my spine as the city thins around us.
I hold on to Maksim’s waist, my arms wrapped tight across his stomach while the wind presses hard against my helmet. He made me wear it. Insisted on it actually, like I had any chance of winning that argument.
Meanwhile, his own head is bare.
His hair catches in the sunlight every time we pass beneath an opening in the trees, the color long gone now, washed out and faded until his blond is on full display. Darker than I expected. Richer. It shines when the light hits it.
I love it.
He hasn’t touched it in a month. Not since I woke up in a hospital bed with him half-crushed around me like if he loosened his grip, I’d disappear.
