When he finally let’s go, his eyes flick to me.
“We’re ready when you are,” he says. “My uncle secured a hotel across town. Private floor. Full security.”
I nod once never taking my eyes off my wife.
He stands.
Moves closer.
Lower voice.
“Your father’s alive,” he says. “Doctor says he’ll recover.”
Sera’s head snaps up.
“What happened?”
I don’t look away from her when I answer.
“What happens,” I say quietly, “to anyone who tries to take what’s mine.”
Chace exhales under his breath like he understands exactly what I mean.
Sera doesn’t speak.
But she watches me differently now.
Like she’s starting to understand what I am and what I’ll do to protect what’s mine.
Chapter Eleven
Seraphina
Moon – Austin Giorgio
Iwatch him dress from the bed.
There’s a shift in Trey as he moves—subtle but unmistakable. Focused. More controlled than the Trey I remember. And yet, he is still him.
He is there in the pauses. In the stillness between decisions. In the way softness doesn’t disappear, only folds inward—becoming something harder, quieter, more deliberate.
The anger is there too. Burning low and constant.
Disciplined.
And that, somehow, frightens me more than shouting ever could.
He pulls on his jeans, muscles moving fluidly beneath golden skin marked by ink and old scars. Every line of him speaks of survival—of a man who should not have made it through what tried to break him.
His dark hair falls into his eyes as he shrugs into his shirt. Longer on top, shaved at the sides, effortlessly undone in a way that never looks accidental, even when it is. It’s the same hair I’ve tangled my fingers in when the world narrowed down to only us.
His tattoos disappear beneath fabric, but I know them by heart. Scripture inked in languages I don’t understand. Symbols of pain and rebirth. Devotion carved into flesh. Marks of a man who has bled and come back sharper for it.
When he lifts his head, those green eyes meet mine—deep, vivid, alive with something unyielding.
Not mercy. Not cruelty. Judgment.
It strikes me then, unbidden and unsettling, how easily he could be mistaken for something divine.
