I could feel the air crackle with tension before I even saw him. His presence, dark and suffocating, reached me long before I laid eyes on Magnus. He was here, standing at the threshold of Elias’s territory, his eyes burning with anger and possessiveness.
I took a deep breath, trying to steady my racing heart. This was the moment I had been dreading—the inevitable confrontation. Elias’s grip on my waist tightened, pulling me slightly closer to him, as if to remind me that he wasn’t going to let go, no matter what.
Magnus’s voice cut through the silence like a blade. “Lena,” he sneered, “you think you’ve escaped me, but I’m not done with you. Not by a long shot.”
I couldn’t look away from him, despite the rush of conflicting emotions that surged within me. The man who had once been my al
