Page 148 of Shadow Waltz

He looked away, sudden shyness breaking through his usual certainty. “I wanted to mark this. Us. Not with something anyone else chose, but with something new. Something that feels like a beginning.”

He pressed the box into my hand, and I opened it with shaking fingers. Nestled inside, on a cushion of midnight blue silk, was a collar—white gold, delicate but strong, sapphires catching the faint light. It was beautiful in a way that felt both royal and deeply personal, elegant but built to last.

My breath stuttered. “Luka…”

He ran his hand through his hair. “I had it made for you. For us. The lock—” He showed me the clasp, subtle but unmistakable. “It doesn’t come off unless I take it off. It’s not about keeping you—it’s about trusting you to stay. About letting the world know you chose this, chose me, after everything.”

My eyes burned. “I did choose. I do choose. Every day.”

He laughed, choked and soft. “Good, because I don’t think I could survive losing you again.”

I swallowed, tears pricking, heart wide open. “Then lock it.”

He reached for my collar, unfastened the old diamonds with careful fingers, letting them fall away. His hands were gentle, reverent, as he brushed the skin at my throat, goosebumps breaking out in the wake of his touch. I tilted my head, giving him access, trusting him with my vulnerability.

When the new collar closed around my neck, it was lighter than I expected but so much more powerful. I heard the click of the lock—a sound that felt like a vow—and felt the cool metal settle over my pulse. Luka lingered, fingers trembling slightly, and when he stepped back, his eyes were glassy with emotion.

“Beautiful,” he whispered, as if seeing me for the first time.

I touched the sapphires, the weight of the metal. “It’s perfect.”

For a moment, neither of us spoke. The city seemed to fade away, the silence between us rich with meaning.

Luka stepped forward, cupping my jaw, searching my face. “This isn’t the end of us, Ash. It’s not a finish line. It’s a beginning. A promise. We build whatever comes next—together.”

I nodded, words useless. I felt everything—fear, hope, pride, relief—swirling in my chest, but above all, gratitude. For him. For us. For surviving and choosing and still believing in love even after the world tried to teach us not to.

He leaned in, kissing me soft and slow, no hunger or desperation—just a brush of lips, a sigh against skin, the gentlest kind of possession. I melted into him, the collar between us a cool thread of permanence.

“Let’s go home,” I said, voice raw.

Back at the penthouse, the city lights stretched out beneath us like a galaxy, and for the first time in years, I felt anchored. Not trapped. Not owned. Loved.

Luka curled around me in bed, hand always touching skin, thumb absently stroking the new collar. We lay together in the hush, and when I finally slept, I dreamed not of escape, but of mornings just like this—safe, chosen, his.

MIDNIGHT'S END

LUKA

ONE YEAR LATER…

The London rain drummed against the tall windows of Adrian’s estate, each drop a persistent rhythm that had become the soundtrack to our new lives—every downpour washing away another layer of the violence we’d left behind in New York. I stood in the study, surrounded by first-edition books and eighteenth-century paintings Adrian insisted belonged in every proper English manor, skimming the final report from the private investigators who’d spent eighteen months searching for Cass.

The knock on the door was soft but certain. Viktor—one of Adrian’s men, always polite but impossible to ignore—stepped inside.

“Adrian would like to see you,” Viktor said in his careful, accented English. “He said it’s important.”

I glanced at Ash, who stood a few feet away, half-lost in his thoughts. Rain still spattered the tall windows behind us, silvering the world beyond the study in a wash of water and late afternoon gloom. The message, the formality of Viktor’s presence, made my pulse quicken in a way that had nothing to do with anxiety. Adrian’s “invitations” were rarely simple, and when he sent someone as discreet as Viktor to fetch us, it was never just business.

Ash met my gaze, something sly flickering in the corner of his mouth. “He say what he wants?”

I shook my head, closing the report and tucking it into the drawer reserved for sensitive matters. “Only that it’s important. Could be anything with Adrian.”

Ash snorted, soft and fond. “Knowing him, it’s probably not a budget meeting.”

“Let’s not keep him waiting,” I replied, though I let my hand rest briefly on Ash’s shoulder as we left the study—a silent check-in, a question I’d learned to ask without words:Are you alright? Do you want to do this?He answered with a squeeze of my fingers and a smile that said he trusted me to read the room.

We followed Viktor down the corridor, rain-shadowed light pooling on the marble floors, the old house echoing with the quiet hush of money and careful secrets. I wondered, as I often did in Adrian’s estate, if anything here was ever entirely private.