Dante’s POV
The feel of her was all wrong. She was supposed to be fighting me, her sharp words like little knives, her eyes spitting fire. That was the Isabella I knew. The Isabella I was prepared to deal with.
This… this was a broken bird. She was shaking so violently I could feel the tremors deep in my own bones. Her fingers were locked in the fabric of my shirt, her knuckles white, as if she were dangling from a cliff and I was the only thing stopping her from falling. Her face was buried against my neck, her ragged, wet breaths hot against my skin. The coppery scent of her blood and the earthy smell of the forest clung to her, a stark reminder of how close I had come to losing her.
The cold, hard stone of my anger was still there, but it was now buried under an avalanche of other th
