Konstantin doesn’t interrupt.
“I believed him,” I continue. “I believed if he said I was safe, then I was.”
The railing creaks softly under my grip.
Behind me, his voice is low. Controlled. “You were.”
I shake my head. “Then why does it feel like everything he promised died with him?”
Silence stretches. Wind tugs at my hair, snapping it against my cheek. Below us, Dimitri shifts his stance, scanning again.
Konstantin steps closer.
Not enough to trap me. Just enough that I can feel his breath near my ear.
“Because the world changed,” he says. “And because men like your father carry storms with them. When they fall…the storm doesn’t.”
I turn slightly, enough to look at him. His expression is carved from restraint, but his eyes burn with something fierce and terrible.
“I won’t lie to you, Raelyn,” he adds. “Safe doesn’t mean untouched. It means guarded. It means watched. It means people willing to stand between you and the dark.”
I look back at the guards. At the guns. At the walls.
At him.
My chest tightens again—not just with grief, but with the terrifying realization that safety now has a cost. And that cost has a name.
Konstantin Rusnak.
I press my forehead against the cool railing, trying to steady the trembling in my hands. “I don’t know who I am without it,” I admit, voice raw, almost swallowed by the night. “All those years…chasing leads, following shadows, hoping he was alive…and now I’m nothing.”
His hand lands on my back, slow, deliberate, grounding. Heat seeps through the layers of my sweater, settling somewhere in the center of me. He doesn’t speak at first—just lets me tremble into the quiet.
Then, low and soft, almost hesitant: “You have the right to fall apart, Raelyn. Grief isn’t weakness. You’re allowed to break.”
The words wrap around me, fragile but unyielding. My chest aches in a way that feels almost new. Tears slide freely now, unbidden, and I let them.
I turn, driven by some impulse I can’t name, and collapse into him, letting my sobs wrack my chest against his. His hands are steady, iron-strong on my back, yet there’s softness in the way he holds me, like he’s trying to contain not just me but all the chaos inside me. His jaw tightens, and I feel it—her pain somehow burning through him as if it’s his own.
When my crying quiets, his thumbs brush against my cheeks, wiping away the traces of tears. Foreheads press together. My pulse hammers, loud enough that I think he must feel it too.
I don’t know who leans first. Who decides. But then our lips meet. Not a careful, innocent brush from long ago. Not tentative. This is raw. Desperate. Grief and obsession crashing together in a kiss that tastes like everything we’ve lost—and everything we refuse to let go.
My hands clutch his shirt, nails digging in, and I feel him answer in kind—unyielding, claiming, tethering. Every secondstretches, heavy with need, with fury, with something that is entirely ours, and entirely dangerous.
He breaks the kiss just an inch, his breath ghosting over my lips, hot and uneven. “No. Not tonight,” he rasps, his voice thick with a dark, inner conflict. “Not while you’re hurting.”
I shake my head against him, my fingers tightening in the fabric of his shirt. “The hurting is why I need you. Make me forget everything else.”
His eyes, fiery and turbulent, search mine for a long, heavy beat. Then, he lets out a low, defeated growl and captures my mouth again, deeper this time, sweeping me up into the whirlwind of him. The grief is still there, but under his touch, it starts to transform into something else—something that feels less like breaking and more like being forged.
He lifts me into his arms, carrying me back inside as if I weigh nothing at all. He lays me on the bed with a staggering reverence, his fingers brushing the stray hairs from my face before he leans down to kiss the corners of my eyes, catching the tears that still cling to my lashes.
I don’t let him pull away. I reach up and kiss him back fiercely, my movements fueled by a desperate need for closeness—a need for the distraction of his touch. I need to feel wanted, to feel anchored, especially now when the rest of the world feels like it’s abandoned me to the dark.
The kiss deepens, spiraling into something hungrier as my need finally overcomes my hesitation. I feel the moment Konstantin’s iron-clad control begins to fray. His hands move over me, a tactile language of worship and possession woven together. He isn’t just touching me; he’s marking me, claiming the space where the grief used to live.
“I have you,” he rumbles against my ear, his voice a low, grounding vibration that shivers down my spine. “Do you hearme, Raelyn? I have you, and I’ll always have you. No one gets to touch you. No one gets to take from you again.”