Page 42 of Vow to Claim You

“I know.”

“He tried to have me killed. In your name. You know what the Council does to men who do that.”

“I know that too.”

I turn my head. She’s propped on one elbow, dark eyes on me, yet there’s nothing pleading in them. She doesn’t beg. She never does. She’s already calculated the cost of asking and decided she’ll pay it if she has to.

That steadiness is what undoes me. The fact that she would absorb whatever answer I gave without flinching. The fact that she’s looking at me like a queen would look at a king, not a princess at a man holding the keys to her cage.

I turn fully toward her, propped on the elbow the way she does, close enough now that I can see the hope kindle in her eyes.

“I won’t make promises I can’t keep,” I say. “But if there’s a way to keep him breathing without bringing the Council down on your head, I’ll find it. And if there isn’t, I’ll exhaust every option before I let this world decide for you.”

Her breath falters for a fraction of a second. It doesn’t escape me.

“For you,” I add, quieter. “I’ll do it because you asked.”

Even though every instinct I have wants that bastard dead. Even though every Council law I helped write would call this weakness. Even though, if anyone else had made this request, I’d already be deciding how to carry out the sentence.

But it isn’t weakness. Nor is it mercy. Certainly not forgiveness.

It’s a choice.

If I was willing to move mountains to save the woman who belonged to my past, then I can’t offer my wife, the woman who’s meant to be my future, anything less. Even if the man she wants me to save is the one I should hate most.

So I make that choice on my own accord, fully aware it may cost me dearly. And I make it anyway.

For her.

Because somehow, the woman who was supposed to mean nothing has become the only person capable of making me rewrite the rules I’ve lived by.

Her eyes flick between mine a moment longer. Then she lies back down, slow, careful, like she’s afraid of breaking whatever just passed between us.

“Thank you, Aric.”

The way my name leaves her mouth, maddeningly soft, does something dangerous to the part of me that still believes in self-control. I close my eyes against it. Then I lie back too, gaze returning to the ceiling because I don’t trust myself to keep looking at her.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Aric

Hyun-seok walks into Nikos’s office at six in the morning, where Nikos and I are already waiting. He walks in with his signature controlled expression and his dark brown eyes that miss nothing. His raven-black hair is combed back with a kind of military neatness. He’s an inch or two shorter than me, built leaner, but there’s nothing slight about him.

“You flew through the night.” I clasp his shoulder.

“You asked.” He returns the gesture, voice flat as though it’s as obvious as the sun shining outside. “I came.”

That’s the whole shape of our friendship in two sentences.

The chair across from me scrapes back as he sits.

Nikos watches us from behind his desk, cigar burning slow between his fingers.

“Let’s not waste time.” The cuff of Nikos’s shirt skims the polished wood as he leans forward, propping an elbow on the desk. “This isn’t an official meeting. The Council doesn’t know you’re here.”

Hyun-seok inclines his head before casting me a sidelong glance.

“I wouldn’t ask if there were another way. And I wouldn’t ask you if it didn’t matter.”