I’ll wear it like armor. I’ll sharpen it into a blade because it’s the only thing standing between me and the devastating truth that I am in love with the man who just executed someone I cared about while I watched.
I hold his gaze, and when I speak, my voice is as steady as a funeral bell. “I’m going to destroy you, Xaden. I'll take everything from you and force you to live the way you’ve made me, hollow, haunted, and aching for something you can never have again.”
Something shifts in his expression. Something almost imperceptible. Almost like pain.
Good.
“It’s hard to take something from someone when you already took it, Tink.” His grip tightens on my neck, possessive even now, and my skin burns where he touches me. “That's the difference between me and you fucking Kellars. I have nothing left to lose. Everything I loved died over a year ago. All I have now is vengeance.”
Vengeance. The word lands in my chest and takes root because I understand it now in a way I didn't before tonight. Before, vengeance was a concept, a plan, a calculated move on a chessboard. Now it's breathing. Now it has a heartbeat. Now it tastes like Kellan’s blood on my lips, sounds like the echo of a gunshot and feels like Xaden’s hand on my neck—brutal, electric and impossible to escape.
I grip the front of his hoodie and press into him harder, our foreheads grinding together. Kellan’s body beneath us is like a testament to everything wrong between us. “You think because you’re alone that makes you strong?” My laugh is vicious and broken. “Wrong, asshole. It makes you weak. You may have hated Kellan. You may have wanted him dead. But Cas didn't, and now your only ally is looking at you in a different light.”
His face pinches in outrage, but I’m not done. Not even close. I shove him backward, loving the way he falls to his ass on the ice, shock fracturing his composure for one satisfying second. I rise to my feet, forcing him to look up at me, and there’s a sneer on his lips but uncertainty in his eyes.
I grip the hem of my blood-soaked shirt and yank it over my head, exposing the small, barely-there swell of my stomach. I run my hand over it slowly, deliberately, and watch his world implode.
Xaden’s eyes blaze with something I’ve never seen before… not rage, not cruelty, but a wild, primal terror that strips away every layer of the monster he wears like a second skin. A strangled sound escapes Cas somewhere behind me but I don’t look away from Xaden. I can’t. Because for the first time since I’ve known him, he looks afraid, and the broken, vengeful thing inside me feeds on it.
And the other part of me, the part that’s still bleeding, still grieving, still stupidly in love with him, that part wants to kneel back down, press his hand to my stomach, and whisper we made something that isn’t destruction.
I bury that part alive.
“I’m the one with my back against the wall,” I say, and my voice is iron wrapped in ice. “I’m alone. I’m surrounded by enemies wearing the faces of people I love. But I’m still fighting.” I pause, letting the weight of what comes next settle between us like a blade. “Mark my words,Devlin. I’ll destroy my family andtake everything from them. I’ll seize their cartel and rebuild it with my bare hands. And once I’m the head of my family?” I tilt my head, and the smile I give him is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever worn. “I’m coming for yours.”
His jaw clenches so hard I can see the muscle jumping.
“And I promise you,” I whisper, leaning down just enough that only he can hear me. “I’ll make sure our child knows I was the one who slaughtered their father.”
His eyes blow wide. The color drains from his face. And for one single, devastating heartbeat, I see him, not the monster, not the killer, not the ghost wrapped in vengeance and violence but the boy underneath. The one who lost everything. The one who might have been different if the world hadn't broken him first. The one I would have loved in another life, a kinder life, a life where we weren't built to be each other's undoing.
The sight of him nearly cracks my resolve in half.
“Kellan lied,” I continue, and each word costs me more than he’ll ever know. “It’s yours, Xaden. When you try to kill me again, and we both know you will, take a second to think about how Emery would view you from above, knowing you murdered your own child.”
I don’t wait for his response. I can’t. Because if I stay one more second, if I look at his shattered expression for one more moment, the part of me that loves him will win and I’ll fall to my knees and beg him to choose differently. To choose us. And that girl died tonight alongside Kellan, bleeding out on the ice in a rink that smells like gunpowder and regret.
I take one last look at Kellan.I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I’ll make it count, I swear.
I walk away. One foot in front of the other. Steady. Unshaking. A queen forged in blood and fury.
The sound of a gun cocking behind me barely registers. My spine doesn’t stiffen. My step doesn’t falter. Let him shoot. Lethim put a bullet in my back the same way he put one in Kellan’s head. At least then the war inside me would finally end, the unbearable, excruciating battle between wanting him dead and wanting him mine.
“Xaden, don’t! That’s your kid!” Cas’s voice cracks through the silence like thunder.
I step off the ice and push through the back door without looking back. The second it closes behind me, the queen crumbles. I yank my shirt back on with shaking hands and collapse against the side of the building, my body folding as everything I held back comes roaring out. I heave, violent and merciless, the meager contents of my stomach splattering against the concrete as my body tries to purge what my mind can’t.
But you can’t throw up grief. You can’t vomit out love. And you sure as hell can’t purge the image of the man you’re falling for standing over the body of your friend with a ghost of a smile on his beautiful, terrible face.
I’m still retching when I sense them approaching. Halo, Pope, Vatican, and Carnage, stalking toward me with fury etched into every line of their faces. The second Carnage sees the blood, he breaks into a run, and when his arms close around me, something inside me shatters completely.
I cling to him like he’s the only solid thing left in a world that’s dissolving beneath my feet, and I let myself break. Because pain is a reminder that you’re alive, and right now I wish I wasn’t. Living isn’t for the faint of heart, it's grueling, relentless, a daily exercise in surviving things that should have killed you. You fight and you pray and you drag yourself through one more day, and for what?
Death is easy. Death is quiet. No pain. No war. No guilt. No Xaden’s eyes burning into yours while your heart tears itself in two.
“Who’s inside?” Pope asks, his voice tight and dangerous.
“Xaden... Cas…” The names scrape out of my throat like broken glass. “They killed him…”
