Kael had not slept.
The ballroom’s golden lights had faded, the music long gone, yet Zaria’s image still burned behind his eyes. Her gown, her voice, her poise none of it belonged to the woman he thought he had broken. No. This was someone reborn, someone untouchable, someone who made the ground shift beneath his feet.
He sat in his office now, the skyline spread before him, untouched whiskey in his glass. The omega his so-called mate had tried to speak to him earlier, her words shrill and cloying. But her voice grated against the memory of Zaria’s silence, the silence she had wielded like a blade when she turned her back on him.
Kael clenched the glass until his knuckles whitened. How could she stand there as if I were nothing? As if the years, the bond, the blood we shared meant nothi
