[Emma's POV]
The word "bloodline" fell from Jaxon's mouth, and the air in the room didn't just get cold—it killed. It was a vacuum that sucked the heat and the very oxygen from our lungs. One tiny, old word was a key inserted into a lock I didn't know was there, turning to open a door to a darkness so vast and intimate it was like falling through an abyss. This was not a kidnapping. This was an excavation. He wasn't chasing her; he was chasing the origin of us, pulling on a string that might unravel centuries, a grudge so old it had turned to legend.
Maddox's response was an earthquake, a shifting of the tectonic plates in the room. "Then we kill him." The phrase was shorter than a sentence and more of a primal order, carved out of the bedrock of his being. He couldn't get angry; anger w
