Page 58 of The Final Contract

In his hands rests a single white rose.

It should be pure, but the petals are dipped in red—each one dripping with blood that trails down the stem and stains his fingers, falling in steady drops onto the floor.

Terror grips me, choking off my breath.

“Seraphina—wake up.”

The voice changes, grounding me, pulling me free. I jolt upright with a gasp, eyes flying open.

Killian is there, sitting at the edge of the bed, his hand heavy on my arm, his storm-gray gaze fixed on me. His chest rises and falls with calm steadiness, but his eyes betray his concern.

“Angel,” he says, softer now, rough with something that feels too much like care. “It’s me. You’re safe.”

But my pulse won’t slow, and the bloody rose is still etched into the back of my eyelids—a vision I can’t shake no matter how tightly Killian’s hand holds me to this moment.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Killian’s voice is low, careful, like he already knows my answer.

I shake my head, my throat tight. “No.”

He doesn’t press. He just shifts, pulling back the covers and climbing in beside me—his bed, the one where he claimed every inch of me until the late hours of the night. My body is still sore in all the right places, stiff from his relentless pace, but my heart hasn’t stopped hammering since I woke.

“Tell me about something,” I whisper, the words fragile, broken.

Without hesitation he drags me into his chest. I sprawl across the hard planes of his body, one arm banded around him, theother tracing feather-light touches up and down his arm. The gentleness is so at odds with him it almost undoes me.

He’s quiet for a moment, then his deep voice fills the silence. “I like to make things. With my hands. Wood. Iron. Glass.”

I blink, my cheek pressed to his chest, listening to the steady thump of his heart.

“I rent a shop not far from here,” he continues, his tone a little gruffer now, like he’s not used to sharing this. “Some of the furniture in my place—I built it. Those chairs in the living room, the midcentury ones. Took me weeks to get the angles right.” He pauses. “Cutting boards are popular too. My mother puts in requests around Christmas—says her friends won’t stop asking for them.”

The image steadies me—Killian, not with a gun or knife in his hands, but with wood shavings on his shirt, his focus bent on something solid and harmless.

My breathing slows. He notices. His arm tightens around me; his lips brush the side of my head. “It’s okay to be upset, Angel.”

My throat burns. I want to resist, but the words tumble out anyway. “It was so real. The dream.” My voice cracks. “I was on a cold floor… and there was a man sitting in the dark. He had a rose.”

I swallow hard. “The petals were white, but the tips…they were dipped in blood.”

His body stiffens beneath me, but his hand never stops moving along my arm—steady and grounding.

He doesn’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing—my dream. Maybe it isn’t just fear. Maybe it’s memory: pieces of the first encounter with him, the moment he fixated. If I keep poking at it, maybe I’ll gather enough fragments to remember who he is, where our paths first crossed, and what he really wants with me.

The thought makes my stomach drop. Chills race down my arms.

Killian’s mouth dips lower, kissing a trail over my chest until my nipples pebble beneath his tongue. My back arches, ready to lose myself in him again, but his phone vibrates twice on the nightstand. He groans against my skin.

“That’ll be Finn.”

He rolls over, grabs the phone, thumb sliding across the screen. I can see the messages when he opens them, clear as day. He makes no effort to hide them. Relief floods me when there’s no Candi—no girl with a heart by her name. Just a small circle of people.

His mother. Finn. Lucian.

And Angel.

The name catches me, pins me. He could’ve saved it for someone else. But deep in my bones, I know it’s me.

I throw my leg over his thigh, needing his focus back on me. His eyes flare dark and molten in an instant. He grabs my chin and crushes his mouth to mine. Even his softest kisses ignite me like kindling, but this one burns hotter, sharper.