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“I… shit. I said that wrong. It’s not that I meant, Loni.”

“It’s fine,” I lie.

“No. It’s not. It never was, and that’s on me. I didn’t know how to protect you then. Putting a wall up between us… doing what I could to make all of Harmony Heights believe that you were meaningless to me when it couldn’t be further than the truth…” He closes the lid on the box as though he can’t look at his collection any longer. “I tell myself I was saving you from the Order. From my uncle. But the truth of it is that I’ve been protecting you from myself most of all.”

“I was never afraid of you,” I admit.

“Not even now that you know I’ve been stalking you for the last ten years? From a distance, yes, but there’s no denying that I haven’t followed your life every step of the way.”

“Even then,” I tell him, my words coming out like a quiet promise.

“I watched over you,” he says, matching my volume. “Not because I expected you to come back. I knew you wouldn’t unless I went and dragged you here?—”

“Or Dallas did.”

A tiny, begrudging chuckle. “Or Dallas did. But either way… you were such an important part of who I was. I held onto it even when I didn’t have any right to.”

He steps closer, just not that close. Like the other night, if I want him, I have to take him.

So I do.

Without giving my body the orders to do it, I’m right there, wrapping my arms around him.

He finishes the embrace, holding me tight. “I’ve spent ten years regretting what I did, and what I didn’t do. What I lethappen. You… you think this is all about control. That I wanted you back in Harmony Heights so that I could force you into something you don’t want.”

“Isn’t it?” I whisper.

“No,” he says flatly. “This is about finishing what I started all those years ago. I Claimed you when I was a boy.” His voice drops notably. “Now I’m a man. And I’m still yours. Even if you never Claim me back.”

My throat seems to close in on itself.

Adrian rests his chin on the top of my head, tucking me under him. “You don’t have to forgive me. For everything I’ve done… I can’t see how you could. But I need you to know this: I never stopped choosing you.”

In my husband’s arms, I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything at all.

More importantly, I don’t leave, either.

Not yet.

And, after tonight, probably not ever.

TWENTY-FIVE

MARTINO’S

ADRIAN

Do you know how good it feels to have it all?

I’m sitting in my office at the Fortress, shoes kicked up on my desk, arms folded behind my head as I smile like the lovesick fool that I am.

I thought the night of Loni’s birthday party was enough to erase the worst of her memories of that last one we attended together. Bas’s graduation party all those years ago is the moment I pinpoint as where my life as I planned it went right off the rails. For an entire year, Loni was my secret. At the Claiming ceremony, when I chose her instead of Haven in front of the newly inducted Order and the old guard, no one could’ve stopped me from Claiming her.

No one, except for Loni herself.

Now it’s ten years later, another Claiming ceremony on the horizon, and it’s like deja vu. Only, this time, the whole fucking world knows that Loni belongs to Adrian Heller, and when I bring her to the Fortress to stand before the fire, she will Claim me back.

I know she will. If she can forgive me for interfering with her life, for stalking her, for hiding the depths of the obsession I’ve felt for her since I was a kid… there isn’t anything that will keep us apart.