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“I failed her,” he adds sadly.

The admission isn’t new. Neither is the guilt behind it.

“You loved her,” I reply.

He nods. “With everything I had.”

“And the system failed her.”

He flinches at the sharpness in my voice. Or maybe it’s his own guilt again. The pack’s policies. The corruption. The restrictions that left women like my mother waiting for care that never came.

He enforced those policies.

He didn’t create them. But he carried them out.

But then my mother died, and the broken mate bond nearly killed him.

Not metaphorically.

Physically.

I remember the way he collapsed the night we lost her. The way the pack doctors whispered in the corner together like they were already preparing for a second funeral. That was the part I never got over. Not the grief. Grief was honest. But the way the bond had reached inside him and decided whether he lived or died.

He survived only because Vincenzo’s wolf commanded it—a sacred dominance gifted to alphas that might as well be hex magic, considering how powerful it is. But survival and living aren’t the same thing.

“I should have fought harder,” he says.

“You’re fighting now,” I remind him.

Since her death, his protection of me has been quiet but unflinching. This apartment—bought in cash he gave me, listed in my name only—is proof of that. And more recently, when it mattered most, he broke with Vincenzo and came to our side. It’s the biggest reason we’ve been able to rebuild our relationship these past few weeks.

“I’m proud of you, too,” he says after a moment.

“For what?”

“For choosing to protect this city instead of rule it.”

I glance at the skyline again.

“I don’t want to rule anything,” I say honestly.

“What do you want?” he asks, and the openness in his expression makes it clear he’s genuinely asking.

I bite my lip, thinking before I answer. But I don’t have to think hard. I want what I’ve always wanted. “I want the girls in this city to grow up without needing to learn how to fight off predators before they learn algebra.”

His expression tightens. “You’ve become stronger than I ever was,” he says quietly.

I don’t argue.

Outside, Indigo Hills gleams in the morning light.

Ramsey is still out there. Another storm is coming. But for a few stolen minutes in a sunlit apartment carved out of a city that nearly destroyed itself⁠—

I let myself love it.

And I let myself love the man who survived losing everything in service to it. But I remind myself of a vow I made a long time ago: I will do whatever it takes to remain unbound by fate’s will. Whatever mate I choose, whoever I love, it will be my choice alone. Because I have no intention of ending up like him.

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