Chloe’s pov
The blade caught the moonlight through the kitchen window, and I had one clear thought before it fell: this was how it ended, pinned to cold tile with a stranger's knee grinding into my stomach, Lisa's dagger sitting useless under my pillow two floors above where it couldn't do me any good at all.
The door exploded inward before the thief's arm finished its arc, splinters raining across the tile.
Nash hit him like a force of nature, a snarl tearing out of his throat that didn't belong to any man, his eyes blown wide and gold, feral in a way I'd never seen on him even in the ballroom. He wrenched the thief off me and sent him crashing into the counter hard enough to splinter the wood, the knife skittering away across the tile in a spray of sparks.
The old thief scrambled up
