I yanked the glass toward me, amber liquid spreading like blood across the wood.
A human at the next table barked a laugh and shoved his friend hard enough, he fell off his chair. Two more sparred at the end of the bar, and a table of males sat smoking, trying to outdo one another with lies about their prowess in bed. What I wouldn’t give right now to be in their shoes.
Instead of feeling like a weapon that had malfunctioned and should be destroyed.
I hadn’t just almost killed her.
I hadwantedto.
Not me. Not Niccolò Draconi, the best fighter in the Draconi Brotherhood, esteemed Vendetarri, and best mate of Gabriel Dominico, our future Don.
But the dangerous beast that prowled under my skin. The one I’d been cursed with since birth, contained through years of training and discipline, the one that hungered for more than blood, only going silent after a kill. And now, facing that darkest part of myself, facing what I’d nearly done, I also had to face the truth.
I’d been assigned to keep her safe.
Duty was how this started.Protect Emberline. Don’t let anyone hurt her.
I’d sworn an oath to Dante, and in the beginning, I’d meant every word. And now, now I couldn’t swallow around my horror. I hadn’t just failed Emberline today. I’d become the monster she needed protectingfrom.
I needed to go see Emilia. I needed her to perform another one of her spells, lock me up tight, because what happened in the Fossa had broken me wide open and now… now all my darkness was about to leak out, and not just metaphorically.
In ways that turned me into a time bomb.
I tipped my glass back and drank until the burn reached all the way down to my stomach.
My thoughts tipped sideways, too, slipping into memories I didn’t want. Emberline, the first time we’d met. The way her hair curled at the nape of her neck, how her tight jacket showed every hidden weapon. Her in a blue velvet gown with snow still sticking in her hair, standing like a fairytale princess in the center of a ballroom.
Her gripping my shirt, fire and ash spilling around us like the depths of Hades, putting all of her trust in me to keep her alive.
Her hands on my ankle—delicate but unyielding, nails digging through my boot, holding me back while she and Gabriel begged me to come to my fucking senses. The way she’d pleaded—You came back to me. That’s all that matters.
My throat tightened.
I was in love with her.
Not lust. Not fascination. Not the dark obsession that males like me mistook for devotion.
Love.
The kind that made my lungs ache when I thought of losing her. The kind that made my head go quiet whenever she spoke because I didn’t want to miss a single word. The kind that made me want to build a wall around her and stand guard forever.
The kind that made me feel like I could fly.
And I had almost been the blade that cut her down.
I stared into the bottom of my glass as if it might give me absolution.
The room swayed, the miserable weight of guilt shifting to jealousy, then even faster to shame.
Dante was back.Her husband was back.
His return should have been a relief.
Because Dante belonged to Emberline in a way I could never touch. Because Dante would keep her safe now. Because Dante was the center of her world, the love she’d bled for and would die for. And because, with Dante back, I could finally do what I should have done the moment I realized my feelings for her had strayed far beyond friend territory.
I had to put distance between us.
I couldn’t be around them, not when they were always touching, always looking at each other. When all I could smell was their comingled scents all over each other.
