“Lower your claws. You’re not solving anything by bleeding on my floor,” my father has the audacity to say while my female stands bruised and bleeding in the grasp of his enforcers, her arm twisted behind her back, her split lip crusted with drying blood, every breath catching as she struggles to pull air into her lungs.
Every instinct demands I tear through the room and put my claws through my father’s throat, but instinct is exactly what he’s counting on. One wrong move and Miro dies before I ever reach her. The only thing keeping her alive is the restraint I can barely hold onto. I force every ounce of fury down behind my ribs, letting it settle into something colder, something far more dangerous.
I should have seen this coming before things came to this — before I found Miro hiding away in the Splits, surviving as best she could. I should have expected my father’s manipulation and Kazren’s deceit months ago. They didn’t simply lure me away from Miro. They took her because they knew exactly what she’d become to me. They knew I’d walk into any trap if she was standing at the centre of it.
My father never wanted to remove a witness.
He wanted to remove his son.
Miro was simply the weapon he chose to do it.
The moment I saw Kazren step into our father’s quarters, I realized how naive I’d been. I came prepared for a fight. Six of my most loyal enforcers stand behind me, Resh at my side.
I taste the half-lie for what it is. He’ll kill her the moment I refuse him — that part is real. But the forgiveness he’s offering is hollow, and we both know it. What he truly wants isn’t her death. It’s my leash. Keeping her alive, holding her over me for the rest of my life, gives him far more than a dead human ever could. He isn’t offering mercy. He’s offering ownership — the kind that lasts decades.
The shape of his game is finally clear. This was never about punishing Kazren or removing a witness. It was about leverage. About reminding me that nothing I value exists beyond his reach.
Because he’s afraid.
This is what my father does. He gave me my first real territory at nineteen and told me I’d finally earned something, and it took me three years to understand the only thing I’d earned was a longer chain.
Miro makes a sound against the guard’s hold, low and broken off before it finishes forming. Her eyes find mine across the room. I expect fear.
Instead, my sensing pits catch the sharp bite of adrenaline, the bitter edge of fury bleeding through her chemistry so strongly it drowns everything else. Anger. For me.
Something fierce settles deep inside me. Every instinct I’ve fought to contain roars to life.
She’s choosing me.
My father has no idea who she really is. He’s made a major error. Miro was never a pawn. Never a weakness.
She’s a reason. The reason.
The only thing in this room worth fighting for.
The answer settles through me with an unexpected calm. My father believes he’s cornered me. He believes there are only two choices left: surrender Miro or surrender myself. He still doesn’t understand that the choice stopped belonging to him the moment he ordered his guards to lay hands on her.
“No.”
His expression barely changes, but I know him well enough to see the disbelief beneath it. He genuinely hadn’t considered this outcome. Somewhere in his calculations, he’d assumed blood would always outweigh everything else.
“You’re prepared to betray your House,” he says slowly, “because of this female?”
Once, that question would have left me searching for the right answer. Now I see the flaw in it. “I’m refusing to betray myself.”
His eyes harden, but I continue before he can speak.
“You still think this is about Miro. It isn’t. She’s simply the reason I finally see you clearly.” My eyes hold his. “I spent my life believing every lesson you taught me was strength. Every punishment had a purpose. Every impossible expectation was meant to make me worthy of inheriting this House. I accepted all of it because I believed you’d already earned the loyalty you demanded from everyone around you.” My eyes drift to Kazren before returning to Father. “I was wrong.”
The words don’t come with anger anymore. They come with certainty.
“You never inspired loyalty. You demanded obedience. You mistook fear for respect because fear was easier to command, and somewhere along the way you convinced yourself they were the same thing.” I glance towards Miro. “The people worth following choose to stand beside you. They aren’t dragged there.”
My father’s expression doesn’t change, but I no longer mistake that stillness for wisdom. It’s emptiness. He genuinely cannot understand why I’d risk everything for someone else because he’s never valued another being above himself. Everything has always been a transaction. A debt. A possession.
“You can’t own loyalty,” I say quietly. “You earn it. That’s the one thing you’ve never understood.”
A flicker behind my father’s eyes recalculates the odds. “Then we’re done talking.” The words land flat, final, the voice of a man closing a ledger.
