Page 83 of Vow to Claim You

You don’t.

You leave him in his cradle, in his father’s house, and you don’t look back, because looking back means seeing that face one more time.

I understand her. That’s the part I never say out loud. Some buried, traitor piece of me has always understood her—and hated that it does.

But understanding isn’t the same as forgiving. And it doesn’t quiet the little boy inside me.

Because that’s the truth I keep welded shit. Somewhere under twenty-eight years of discipline is still a child standing in this house who wonders why she couldn’t take him too. Whether the sight of him was so unbearable she’d rather hand him to the monster than carry him one mile toward something safe. Knowing exactly what that monster would do to him,. Knowing he’d be carved hollow the same way she was.

She knew what Vidar would make of me, and she left me to it anyway.

My first lesson came from a cradle. The people meant to keep you are the ones most capable of leaving.

And then there’s her.

Ayanna is nothing like the ghost I was raised on. The ghost made herself small enough to slip through a door and never come back.

Ayanna does the opposite. She storms in. She looks at me like she’s daring the cold to win—and fully intends to outlast it. And for the first time in years, something dangerously close to feeling takes root inside me. Something I thought I’d buried beyond recovery.

I care.

Not about the alliance. Not about the Syndicate or the Council seat or the powers that come with it.

About her.

I hit the bag again, and the sting shooting up my forearm is almost a relief because the realization is intolerable.

Caring is where the rot starts—that’s gospel in this house. Vidar carved it into me young, and standing here, I can’t prove him wrong. Maybe this is exactly how it begins. You care. You protect. You let yourself trust it. And then one ordinary morning she looks at you and understands she doesn’t want to stay, and you learn the lesson your mother taught you the day you were born all over again, except this time you’re old enough to feel the whole of it.

Another punch. Harder. Because there’s one thing in this I will not repeat.

I will never trap a woman the way my father trapped my mother. I will never be the prison someone has to bleed to escape. I’ll burn this entire dynasty to its foundation before I become that man. And if it ever comes to it—if she ever looks at me the way Angelique must have looked at him, with fear where love should be—I won’t make her run.

I’ll leave first.

Even if I have to take the whole house down with me.

I hit the bag until my knuckles split and the sting drags me back into my own skin, back behind the walls where it’s quiet, and nothing reaches. Then I stop.

I rest my forehead against the worn leather. Breathe until the chain goes still.

I straighten, wipe the blood from my hands with a towel, and roll my sleeves down over it.

Control restored. No one will ever see that crack. Not Vidar. Not her.

Especially not her.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Ayanna

Idon’t want leverage over my wife.

The words keep echoing in my mind, no matter how many times I try to shake them off. The moment keeps replying like a broken tape on repeat. The heat of Aric only a breath from me. The half inch he didn’t close. The way he said he cared without ever using the word, and then Eero appearing in the doorway, and the spell breaking like glass underfoot.

I go up to our room, and I kill time. I tell myself I’m not waiting. I change into something to sleep in, and I sit against the headboard with a book I don’t read, but I am, very obviously, waiting. For the door to open. For his footsteps in the hall. For the conversation we left unfinished hanging in the air of his office.

The hours go by. The polar dark presses flat against the windows, that endless Norwegian night that never breaks into morning when you want it to.