ZAYNE’S POV

Power tastes like metal in your mouth.

I told myself that walking up the marble steps to my father’s house, it would be a conversation.

A clean, civilized thing. I rehearsed lines about boundaries and a future not built on fear. I forgot the way my throat tightened the second the door opened.

Charles was sitting in the foyer like a man who owned time itself silk robe, the faint scent of his cologne, the kind of calm that had ruined me for years.

He didn’t stand when I came in. ...