55. Dante
Dante
It’s quiet now.
The kind of quiet that doesn’t demand anything from me. No alarms. No fists through drywall. No blood dripping down my wrist like a fucking baptism.
Just Evelyn, asleep in our bed.
The sheets tangled around her legs, one hand on her belly like she’s trying to protect something even in dreams.
I sit in the chair across the room, shirtless, a half-drunk whiskey sweating in my palm. The windows are open. The breeze smells like late summer and clean dirt.
Like things trying to grow again.
And for the first time in years, I don’t want to stop it.
I don’t want to burn it all down just to feel alive.
Because I am alive.
And she’s here.
Still here.
My wife.
God, those two words used to feel like a trap.
Now?
Th ey feel like the only truth I have left.
Evelyn made it through Hell— my Hell—and still looked at me like I was worth staying for. She chose me when I didn’t deserve it. Forgave me, when I couldn’t speak the words out loud. And she never asked for anything I couldn’t give… only waited for the day I might finally offer it.
And now, she’s mine.
Not in the way men mean when they claim women.
She’s mine like a vow. Like oxygen.
Like every fucked-up part of me finally settled into place when she said I do .
I take a sip of whiskey and let my eyes drift to the ceiling.
Lucien.
That bastard has surprised me more times than I can count. Thought he was weak once—too soft, too calculating. But watching him rip apart the wreckage at the wedding with the guests bleeding in his arms?
No. That man is fire dressed as frost.
And Astra—she’s steel under silk. The kind of woman who walks through her own trauma just to drag someone else out.
They belong together.
Always did.
And watching them now… content, married, rebuilding?
It doesn’t make me jealous.
It makes me hopeful .
Because if they can make it—after all that pain—then maybe there’s something left in this world worth holding onto.
Harmony and Reese…
That story still twists something in my gut.
Harmony was always half-silence, half-scream. Always trying to disappear in plain sight. And I watched her unravel under Damien’s thumb, thinking she’d never get back up.
But she did.
She stood.
And Reese—stoic, brutal Reese—was the first person to see her as whole , not broken. Not bait. Not something to shape into obedience.
He protected her like it meant something.
Hell, maybe it did.
I’ve seen the way he looks at her now. Not with lust. Not with power.
With fear . Fear that he could lose her.
And I get it.
Because I watched Evelyn flatline once.
And I will never forget what it did to me.
I shift forward, setting the glass down, elbows on knees, fingers threading into my hair.
Damien.
That name still tastes like blood.
My “brother”. My curse.
Lucien used to chase his shadow—tried to kill him once, failed harder than he ever failed anything.
But now?
He’s gone.
Heart shot out.
Face caved in.
And I don’t feel guilty.
Not even a little.
Because that man was rot.
He would’ve kept infecting everything he touched until there was nothing left but bone.
The world is better without him .
We’re better.
And if I close my eyes now, I don’t see his face anymore.
I see Evelyn.
Smiling.
Alive.
Ours.
I think about Brooke. She’s healing, and that’s more than I could ever ask for. For someone who has been through some shit. She sure knows how to stay strong. I’ll let her stay with us as long as she needs to, but something tells me she won’t need me for long.
I push out of the chair and crawl into bed behind Evelyn, wrapping my arm around her waist, burying my face in the curve of her neck.
She sighs in her sleep, soft and safe.
I press a kiss to her shoulder and whisper into her skin.
“I’m done fighting ghosts.”
Because the war’s over.
And for once, I didn’t lose.