Page 10 of The Chief (Those (Damn!) Texas Dantes #3)

CADE DIDN’T speak as the SUV pulled through the gates of the Dante ranch, an active, working spread of land set outside the Dallas city limits.

Unlike Titus’s mansion on the edge of the city or Zane’s high-rise penthouse downtown, Cade preferred open sky and isolation. Space to think. Space to control.

The perimeter guards nodded without needing instructions. Discreet. Efficient. Expected. Inside, the lights of the main house glowed warm through the windows, welcoming from a distance but impossible to enter without clearance. Just how he liked it.

Elise sat beside him in silence, eyes forward, hands clasped in her lap.

She hadn’t said a word since they’d left the reception.

He hadn’t expected her to. The memory of her mouth lingered, warm, unexpected, far too vivid.

He hadn’t expected the kiss to gut him the way it had.

He hadn’t planned on having any reaction at all.

But he could still taste her on his lips.

He watched her out of the corner of his eye. She looked delicate in the dark, but he knew better now. There was steel under the silk. And tonight, he planned to find out exactly how much.

The SUV came to a stop. He stepped out first, then circled to her side and opened the door before the driver could. She looked up at him, wary. Still shell-shocked. Still assessing.

He offered his hand with a hint of a smile. “Let me show you what you’ve married into.”

She took it, small fingers curling around his much larger ones, light as silk but as firm as the resolve holding her back ramrod straight.

Cade watched her rise, the overhead lights catching on the sheen of her silver-blonde hair, the defiance in her chin warring with the exhaustion swimming in those intense blue eyes.

She was a contradiction, this woman. Shy but stubborn. Sharp but guarded. She had no idea what kind of fire she carried. No idea how goddamn beautiful she looked when she squared her shoulders and pretended she wasn’t afraid.

Inside, the house wrapped around them like a cathedral of expansive silence. Stone floors stretched beneath exposed beams, and the scent of cedar mingled with traces of aged bourbon and firewood. Every line of the architecture reflected Cade himself, disciplined, elegant, and unshakably structured.

There was no clutter, no chaos, no softness—until her presence breached it. Until her hair caught the light, and her perfume slipped into the room like a dare. She didn’t belong here. Not in the way the stone did. But God help him, she was already reshaping the space just by standing in it.

He led her not upstairs, not to the bedroom, but down a hallway toward the back of the house to the vacant kitchen.

The choice wasn’t random. The bedroom could wait.

This, right now, was about easing her fears.

Reminding them both that they weren’t just a mark on their palms and a vow and a ceremony.

This was about trust. He needed her steady.

He needed to earn something more than heat. He needed her to feel safe.

Elise blinked. “We’re... eating?”

“You haven’t eaten since that pathetic bite of wedding cake,” he retorted mildly.

He’d watched her at the reception, picking at the plate someone handed her, too distracted to pretend to eat.

She was running on nerves, adrenaline, and sheer force of will.

That stopped here. If she was going to walk into his world, she’d do it with intensity.

With steadiness. With fuel in her body and as much relaxation as possible.

He didn’t want to constrain her, but to steady her.

She’d been swept into chaos all day, and if nothing else, he wanted her to know that right now, with him, she could breathe.

He gestured for her to sit at the long, polished island.

She did, hesitantly. He opened the fridge and pulled out cold chicken, berries, a wedge of Manchego, and fresh bread he’d had delivered that morning.

It wasn’t what most people imagined for a wedding night, but Cade had never cared much for what other people thought.

He laid out the food, made her a plate, and slid it across the island.

“Eat.”

Elise sighed and picked up a slice of bread. “This is... unexpectedly domestic.”

“You’ll find I’m full of surprises.”

She gave a quiet laugh. It wasn’t steady, but it wasn’t fake either. When they’d first met, she’d played the part of a lightweight—fluttery, distracted, vague in a way too carefully exhibited. A shield, he realized now. A disguise.

But here, in the soft spill of kitchen light and the echo of exhaustion, that mask had slipped. He wasn’t talking to the performance anymore. He was seeing the real Elise and she was worth knowing. He took that as progress.

They ate in silence for a moment, the kind that wasn’t awkward but charged, thick with everything unspoken between them.

Cade moved with purpose, rising to his feet and retrieving two tall glasses from the cabinet.

He filled them at the filtered tap, watching her from the corner of his eye.

She wasn’t pretending anymore. Not fidgeting.

Not fluttering. Just watching him, quietly, like she was finally letting herself breathe. Or letting herself be herself.

He set one glass in front of her, the gesture gentle. ”Drink,” he said simply. Not an order. A care-laced command she didn’t flinch from. He let the silence stretch for another beat, then spoke, level and unmistakably in command. ”The Brand.”

She tensed. Her hand hovered, fingertips brushing the glossy skin of a blackberry, then stopping as if the fruit had turned to stone. Her breath stilled. The air between them shifted, charged with recognition, with something old and fated and utterly outside her control.

“You saw it,” he said.

She hesitated. Her eyes dropped to her plate, lashes sweeping downward as if the answer cost her something to admit. For a moment, it looked like she might lie, might smooth the edges of the truth the way she did when things got too sharp. Her mouth parted. Then closed again.

Cade saw it. The hesitation. The calculation. The flicker of retreat behind a far-too comfortable facade forming behind her eyes.

“Don’t,” he said, quiet and absolute.

Her head came up and she met his gaze. Swallowed hard.

“Yes, I saw it,” she confessed, the words escaping with blatant honesty, like a truth finally wrestled into daylight. “In the bridal suite, right before the ceremony. I wasn’t sure what it was. Not until I saw yours.”

He lifted his palm as though revealing a secret carved into flesh.

The Dante wolf gleamed faintly beneath the kitchen lights, dark and ancient.

Not just a mark. Not just a symbol. But a brand that pulsed with the promise of fate.

It shimmered with irrefutable strength, etched into the very core of who he was.

Unmistakable. Unforgiving. And already mirrored on her skin.

“You weren’t supposed to be the bride,” he said, voice rough. “But fate doesn’t care about planning. Doesn’t wait for permission. It marks who it wants, and leaves the rest of us scrambling to catch up.”“

“You could’ve refused,” she dared to say.

“So could you.”

Her smile was crooked, her expression a tangle of disbelief and reluctant amusement, like she couldn’t quite believe what she’d done.

Or what she’d become by doing it. “Petra was already in the dress. The vows were typed. Leif was halfway to smug. It didn’t seem like the best time to announce I was glowing. ”

Cade almost smiled. Almost. “You didn’t have to announce it. I figured it out,” he corrected, voice quiet but steady, “despite your trying to hide it or pretending it didn’t exist. But you didn’t run from it. Not when it mattered. That counts for something.”

She looked down at her plate. “What would you have done if I’d refused to marry you? If I’d run?”

Cade let the silence stretch. Then he answered with quiet certainty.

”I wouldn’t have forced you into anything.

Not with the Brand between us. I know what it means.

I know what it demands. But if you’d run, I would’ve come after you.

” He paused, eyes locked on hers. “Not to trap you. Just to find you. Because no matter where you went, we would’ve ended up right here.

Eventually. The Brand doesn’t care how long it takes.

It always gets what it wants. And so do I. ”

Elise stared at him. Not with fear, but with something more uncertain, like she wasn’t sure if that level of certainty comforted or terrified her. The idea of being wanted with that kind of inevitability... it stole the breath from her lungs.

Still, she didn’t look away.

His voice didn’t carry a threat. Just conviction. Like fate wasn’t something he had to chase. Just something he refused to ignore.

She nodded once. “I didn’t know what the mark meant. Not at first. And when I realized... I panicked. It was Petra’s wedding. Not mine. I shouldn’t have been there.”

“But you stayed.”

“Only at the last second.” Her voice was thin. “I didn’t open my hand. I couldn’t. I was too shocked. In fact, I fought you. I finally opened my hand because I couldn’t stand the idea of walking away. Not from you. Not after the mark.”

Cade’s gaze didn’t shift. “That’s brave enough for me.” He hesitated, then added, “Tell me something. When I found the Brand on you, did you want me to stop it? To call off the wedding?”

She gave a weak laugh. “Part of me hoped you would. That you’d look at me, realize I was a mistake, and call the whole thing off. I wanted to believe I could blame it on nerves. Or the mark. Anything but what it really was.”

“And what was it really?”

“A choice. A stupid, reckless, terrifying choice I didn’t understand but couldn’t walk away from.”

Cade nodded once. “Good. Because that’s what I saw. Not a mistake. A woman who made a decision when it counted.”