Page 68 of Hunted to the Altar

My voice, when it came, surprised both of us. “You shot me.”

His breath hitched.

“You pulled a gun on me knowing I was carrying your child. And you still squeezed the trigger.”

“I didn’t know what else to do?—”

“You could have missed,” I barked. “You could have aimed for the floor. You could have aimed for the ground. You chose my knee.”

The quiet that followed wasn’t peaceful. It was the kind that settles before a bomb.

He ran a hand down his face. I watched him through narrowed eyes.

He looked older.

Tired.

Not the smooth, in-control man who ruled with cold calculation.

Just a man who had ruined something so completely he didn’t know where to stand anymore.

“I thought I could hold it all together,” he said finally. “If I kept you close. If I made sure no one could take you.”

“You were the one who took everything.”

He dropped to his knees beside the bed.

“Say it again,” he said. “Say whatever you need to say. Just—don’t go.”

The silence filled again. Thicker this time. My throat felt tight, like I was choking on all the grief that hadn’t found words yet.

He reached for my hand, hesitated.

Then didn’t touch me.

“I know I don’t deserve forgiveness.”

“You don’t.”

His nod was slow. Like he had rehearsed this ending in his mind already. “But if I could go back and undo it—if I could take the pain from you and wear it myself—I would.”

He looked up then, and for the first time, I saw him for what he truly was.

Not untouchable.

Not a god.

Just a man.

A man who had taken something sacred and crushed it in his fist.

I didn’t know if I hated him more for what he did, or for meaning it when he said he wouldn’t survive without me.

“You killed the only thing I had left to believe in,” I said softly.

Samuel closed his eyes. “I know.”

And somehow, that made it worse.