ENSNARED

Blood had a sound.

It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t dramatic. It was a wet, dull thud against silk and skin, followed by the faintest, sickening hiss as warmth spread into fabric.

Alaric Voss froze before he even understood. His gaze dropped to the widening crimson bloom on his shirt, then rose to the woman in front of him.

“Leo…na?” His voice rasped out thin and broken.

Her hands were steady on the hilt of the knife, but her breath came in quick, shallow bursts. The amber lamplight threw shadows up her face, sharpening her cheekbones, hollowing her eyes. Outside the penthouse windows, Boston glittered gold and white, a city alive with power and ambition. Inside, it was just the two of them—and the blade buried in his chest.

Only a minute ago, her lips had been on his. Only a minute ago, he’d called her brilliant and meant it.

Now she had stabbed him.

Alaric staggered backward, one hand pressing against the wound, the other reaching for her without quite knowing why. There was no anger in his eyes—only disbelief, raw and unfiltered.

“You were supposed to be the monster,” she whispered.

Her voice cracked on the last word. For fifteen years she’d imagined this moment—her knife in his chest, justice in her hands, her parents’ ghosts finally at peace. She’d pictured fury flooding her veins, triumph lifting her chin.

Instead, there was only a cold, hollow weight in her stomach.

The scent of his cologne curled through the air, expensive and warm, exactly as it had been in her nightmares. She had been eight years old the first time she smelled it—on a man walking out of her father’s office the day everything fell apart. That scent had haunted her growing up in foster homes, moving from city to city, holding tight to one vow: she would find him, and she would make him pay.

The trail had led her here. To him.

And somewhere along the way, her vengeance had tangled with something dangerous—admiration, attraction, the pull of two ambitious minds orbiting the same sun. She’d told herself it was just a role she was playing, just another mask. But when he smiled at her, when his voice dipped into that quiet, private register he used only for her… the mask had begun to crack.

Now there was no mask left. Only blood.

Alaric’s knees buckled. He caught himself against the edge of the sofa, teeth gritted. “Why?”

She swallowed hard, but her voice came steady. “You killed my father.”

His hazel eyes—so often sharp and calculating—were soft now, puzzled. “Your father?”

She felt her grip falter. He didn’t even know? That couldn’t be true. He had to know. He had to.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket, loud in the stillness. She didn’t want to look. Didn’t want the outside world to intrude on the moment she’d been living toward for more than half her life. But the vibration persisted, insistent.

She pulled it out, smearing blood across the glass as she read.

FROM: Lyra

It wasn’t Voss. It was Cassien.

The world lurched.

Her fingers went numb, the knife sliding from her hand and clattering to the marble. The words on the screen burned themselves into her mind, each one a brand: It wasn’t Voss. It was Cassien.

She looked up at him.

His breaths were coming shallow now, his shirt saturated with dark red. The hand on his chest trembled. But his eyes—still open—were fixed on her.

Not with rage. Not even with hate.

With sorrow.

“No…” The word slipped out of her, broken. She dropped to her knees in front of him, catching his shoulders as his body tilted forward. His weight pressed into her, warm and heavy and terrifyingly human.

She had spent years crafting the perfect strike, but her target had been wrong. The man she wanted dead was still alive. And the man bleeding in her arms had—what? Defended her. Trusted her. Maybe even loved her.

Her mind replayed flashes of him: leaning in at late-night campaign meetings, sleeves rolled up, asking her opinion before anyone else’s. Standing beside her at rallies, deflecting hostile questions so she could recover. Calling her a force of nature in that low, intimate tone that belonged to no one else.

She had told herself it was all manipulation. That his warmth was calculated, his admiration a tool to pull her in closer. But if that were true… why did his expression now carry nothing but grief for her?

Alaric’s lips moved, but she had to lean in close to hear him. “You… should have asked.”

The simple sentence gutted her more than any curse could have.

Her hands pressed against the wound, but blood slipped hot and slick between her fingers. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—” She didn’t know if she was speaking out loud or just inside her own head.

He coughed once, the sound wet. “Tell me… your name. Your real name.”

For a moment she hesitated, her heart pounding against her ribs. She had been Leona to him, Leona the strategist, the loyal right hand. Seren was the name she had buried, the name tied to an eight-year-old girl’s grief and fury.

“My name is Seren Vale.”

His eyes searched hers, something like recognition flickering there. But before he could speak again, his strength gave out. His head rested against her shoulder, breaths shallow and uneven.

Outside, the skyline blurred through her tears.

Inside, the air was thick with copper and perfume and the ruin of everything she’d built. She had come to end a monster. Instead, she’d carved the life out of a man who had given her something she hadn’t dared to want—belonging.

The irony was cruel enough to choke on. The political labyrinth they had navigated together now seemed irrelevant, a child’s game compared to the real war still waiting in the shadows. Cassien was still out there. And she… she was no longer the hunter. She was a fugitive with a body cooling on her floor.

Somewhere in the city, people were laughing, drinking, falling in love. Somewhere, Cassien might be raising a glass to the success of a plan she hadn’t even known she was playing into.

But here, in the amber glow of the penthouse, Seren Vale knelt over the only man who had ever truly seen her—and realized that vengeance had not freed her.

It had chained her forever to this moment.