And now Jaxon had tried to force a bite on her.
I set down my brush.
The thing I hadn’t expected – the thing I was sitting with now, in the quiet of my suite with my carefully managed face reflected back at me – was the feeling that had moved through me when my maid finished the account.
Not relief that Jaxon had been dealt with. Not satisfaction that the complication had been removed.
Something that felt uncomfortably like recognition.
Isla Rosewood had spent eight years loving a man who had hidden her. Who had kept her in shadow, managed her expectations, made her wait. Who had chosen power over her and then had the audacity to want both.
I had watched powerful men do that my entire life.
I had watched my mother accept it. Had watched other Lunas accept it. Had told myself I was d
