The door to Cordelia's chambers slammed open with such force it cracked against the wall. Lord Leon stood in the doorway, his face twisted with a fury she'd never seen before. In his hand, he held a fistful of cream parchment—notes, she realized with sickening dread.
All the notes Dante had sent her.
"Father…"
"Don't." His voice cracked like a whip. He crossed the room in three strides and threw the papers at her feet. "How could you?"
Her heart hammered against her ribs. "I can explain."
"Explain?" He laughed, but there was no humor in it. "Explain how my own daughter looked me in the eye every morning and lied?"
The words hit like physical blows. "How did you—"
"Does it matter?" He stepped closer, and she saw his hands were shaking.
"Father, please listen to me. Dante is not what you think!"
"He's exactly what I think!" Leon's voice rose to a roar. "He's a monster who saw an opportunity and took it! He seduced my naive daughter, filled her head with pretty lies, and now he thinks he can claim her as his prize!"
"It wasn't like that!" Desperation made her voice sharp. "We're—"
"You are a child playing at understanding things beyond your grasp." His voice went cold, controlled. "But I will undo this mistake. Tonight. Before it goes any further."
Terror shot through her. "What are you planning?"
"What I should have done the moment the wolves darkened our doorstep—remove the threat permanently." He turned toward the door. "You'll stay here until it's done."
"No!" She lunged forward, grabbing his arm. "Father, please! Don't hurt him!"
He shook her off with surprising force, and she stumbled. "You'll thank me for this someday. When you're older, when you understand what I saved you from."
"You can't— Father, I'm his wife!"
"A marriage conducted in darkness by wolves has no legitimacy in the eyes of God or law!" He stepped through the doorway and pulled a key from his pocket.
"Father, don't do this!" She threw herself at the door, but he was faster. The lock clicked with terrible finality. "Please!"
His footsteps retreated down the corridor, steady and resolved. She pounded on the heavy oak, screaming until her voice went hoarse, but no one came.
No one dared defy Lord Leon when his mind was set.
Finally, she sank to the floor, her fists aching, tears streaming down her face. The moonstone pendant felt heavy against her throat—a reminder of everything she stood to lose.
* * *
The clearing waited like a held breath. Dante stepped into the open space with his hands visible at his sides, every sense alert.
"Alpha Dante." Leon's voice came from the shadows, heavy with mockery. "How kind of you to accept my daughter's invitation."
Men emerged from the treeline—eight, maybe ten. No torches. And beneath the winter cold, Dante caught the bitter scent of wolfsbane.
Leon stepped into the moonlight, and his face was carved from stone and grief.
"Did you think I wouldn't find out? One of your own came to me. He told me everything. A wolf with more honor than my own flesh and blood."
The betrayal cut deep, but Dante pushed it aside. "Lord Leon, whatever you've been told—"
"The truth." Leon's hand moved, and archers appeared on the clearing's edge, arrows knocked and gleaming with poison. "That you seduced my daughter. That you planned to steal her away from everything she's ever known."
"She chose me." Dante held his ground. "Freely. I offered her a life, not a cage."
“And I won't let you finish what you started.” Leon's voice shook with barely contained rage. “I won't let you destroy the last person I love!"
"Then let me prove we can coexist!" Dante spread his hands. "Cordelia is my wife, my mate. Harming me will only hurt her."
For a heartbeat, uncertainty flickered across Leon's face.
Then it hardened. "Fire."
The whistle of arrows split the night. Dante moved, but wolfsbane-tipped shafts buried in his thigh and shoulder. Liquid fire exploded through his veins.
He stayed standing through sheer will, even as poison raced toward his heart.
Two men rushed forward with iron shackles. Dante didn't fight them. He lifted his hands and let the metal bite into his wrists—a deliberate show of submission that he hoped might reach whatever remained of Leon's reason.
But Lord Leon only nocked another arrow, this one aimed at Dante's heart. "Any last words, beast?"
"Father, no!"
Cordelia exploded from the treeline, her dress torn, hair wild, face streaked with tears. A broken window shutter hung from one hand—she'd torn through the wooden slats with desperate strength and climbed down the manor wall.
"Cordelia," Leon's bow wavered. "How did you—"
She ran not away from the danger, but straight toward it. Straight toward Dante.She crashed into his bound form, wrapping her arms around him, pressing her body against his as a living shield.
Leon's face went white with horror as he realized what was about to happen. His daughter was putting herself between him and his target.
"If you kill him, you have to kill me too," she said, voice shaking but absolute. "Because I won't live without him. Do you understand? I'm his wife. His mate. And I choose him!"
Leon's hands trembled on the bow. "You don't know what you're saying."
"I know exactly what I'm saying." Tears streamed down her face. "I love him. And if you do this, I will never forgive you. I'll hate you every day for the rest of my life."
For a long moment, father and daughter stared at each other across an unbridgeable chasm. Leon's bow dipped slightly, and Cordelia dared to hope… Then Leon's face hardened with grim resolve.
"Better you alive and hating me than corrupted by a monster."
He dropped the bow and drew his sword instead—a blade meant for close combat, for certainty, for ending this with his own hands rather than from a distance.
He charged forward, sword raised high.
"No!" Cordelia's hand flew to Dante's belt, fingers closing around the dagger she knew he kept there.
She pulled it free and thrust it out in front of her. Not aiming, not planning, just desperately trying to create a barrier between the charging blade and the man she loved.
Time shattered into fragments of horror.
Leon was already committed to his strike, moving too fast to stop. The momentum of his charge carried him forward onto the outstretched dagger. The blade punched through leather and cloth and found the space between his ribs with terrible precision.
His sword fell from nerveless fingers, clattering on the frozen ground. He stumbled forward into his daughter's arms, the dagger buried to the hilt in his chest.
Leon's eyes went wide with shock as he looked down at the blade, then up at his daughter's horrified face.
"Cordelia…" he whispered, and blood flecked his lips.
"No…" The word came out broken. "No, no, no— Father!"
He reached up with a trembling hand and touched her face one last time. Then the light went out of his eyes, and he fell.
Cordelia stood frozen, her father's blood warm on her fingers. The whole clearing held its breath.
When Daniel appeared with wolves at his back, Lord Leon's men scattered into the darkness. Some fleeing in terror, some simply wanting no part of what came next.
Silas stepped forward and broke the iron shackles from Dante's wrists with quick, efficient movements.
Dante surged to his feet despite the poison weakening him and caught Cordelia as her knees gave out.
"I killed him…" she whispered, staring at her blood-stained hands. "I killed my father."
"You saved me," Dante said, his voice rough. He turned her face away from the body, forcing her to look at him instead. "Cordelia, look at me. Look only at me."
But she couldn't stop staring at her hands.
"There's so much blood. I can't… I didn't mean—" He pulled her against his chest, one hand cradling the back of her head when her voice cracked. "He was going to kill you. And I just wanted him to stop, and the dagger was there, and I didn't think—"
"Breathe," he commanded gently. "Just breathe. I've got you. Now look at me, love."
She did. His shoulder bled freely; his thigh soaked his boot; aconite's pallor lay under his skin, and still his mouth found a shape that belonged only to her.
"Say it," he told her, because sometimes the path out of a nightmare is through a sentence. "Say what is still true."
"I'm yours," she whispered, tiny and absolute.
"Yes." He kissed her, quick and certain. "You're mine. Now keep your eyes on me. It's ending."