17. Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Seventeen
ZAVIN
“Lower your claws. You’re not solving anything by bleeding on my floor,” my father has the audacity to say while my female stands bruised and bleeding in the grasp of his enforcers, her arm twisted behind her back, her split lip crusted with drying blood, every breath catching as she struggles to pull air into her lungs.
Every instinct demands I tear through the room and put my claws through my father’s throat, but instinct is exactly what he’s counting on.
One wrong move and Miro dies before I ever reach her.
The only thing keeping her alive is the restraint I can barely hold onto.
I force every ounce of fury down behind my ribs, letting it settle into something colder, something far more dangerous.
I should have seen this coming before things came to this — before I found Miro hiding away in the Splits, surviving as best she could.
I should have expected my father’s manipulation and Kazren’s deceit months ago.
They didn’t simply lure me away from Miro.
They took her because they knew exactly what she’d become to me.
They knew I’d walk into any trap if she was standing at the centre of it.
My father never wanted to remove a witness.
He wanted to remove his son.
Miro was simply the weapon he chose to do it.
The moment I saw Kazren step into our father’s quarters, I realized how naive I’d been. I came prepared for a fight. Six of my most loyal enforcers stand behind me, Resh at my side.
I taste the half-lie for what it is. He’ll kill her the moment I refuse him — that part is real.
But the forgiveness he’s offering is hollow, and we both know it.
What he truly wants isn’t her death. It’s my leash.
Keeping her alive, holding her over me for the rest of my life, gives him far more than a dead human ever could.
He isn’t offering mercy. He’s offering ownership — the kind that lasts decades.
The shape of his game is finally clear. This was never about punishing Kazren or removing a witness. It was about leverage. About reminding me that nothing I value exists beyond his reach.
Because he’s afraid.
This is what my father does. He gave me my first real territory at nineteen and told me I’d finally earned something, and it took me three years to understand the only thing I’d earned was a longer chain.
Miro makes a sound against the guard’s hold, low and broken off before it finishes forming. Her eyes find mine across the room. I expect fear.
Instead, my sensing pits catch the sharp bite of adrenaline, the bitter edge of fury bleeding through her chemistry so strongly it drowns everything else. Anger. For me.
Something fierce settles deep inside me. Every instinct I’ve fought to contain roars to life.
She’s choosing me.
My father has no idea who she really is. He’s made a major error. Miro was never a pawn. Never a weakness.
She’s a reason. The reason.
The only thing in this room worth fighting for.
The answer settles through me with an unexpected calm. My father believes he’s cornered me. He believes there are only two choices left: surrender Miro or surrender myself. He still doesn’t understand that the choice stopped belonging to him the moment he ordered his guards to lay hands on her.
“No.”
His expression barely changes, but I know him well enough to see the disbelief beneath it. He genuinely hadn’t considered this outcome. Somewhere in his calculations, he’d assumed blood would always outweigh everything else.
“You’re prepared to betray your House,” he says slowly, “because of this female?”
Once, that question would have left me searching for the right answer. Now I see the flaw in it. “I’m refusing to betray myself.”
His eyes harden, but I continue before he can speak.
“You still think this is about Miro. It isn’t.
She’s simply the reason I finally see you clearly.
” My eyes hold his. “I spent my life believing every lesson you taught me was strength. Every punishment had a purpose. Every impossible expectation was meant to make me worthy of inheriting this House. I accepted all of it because I believed you’d already earned the loyalty you demanded from everyone around you.
” My eyes drift to Kazren before returning to Father. “I was wrong.”
The words don’t come with anger anymore. They come with certainty.
“You never inspired loyalty. You demanded obedience. You mistook fear for respect because fear was easier to command, and somewhere along the way you convinced yourself they were the same thing.” I glance towards Miro.
“The people worth following choose to stand beside you. They aren’t dragged there. ”
My father’s expression doesn’t change, but I no longer mistake that stillness for wisdom. It’s emptiness. He genuinely cannot understand why I’d risk everything for someone else because he’s never valued another being above himself. Everything has always been a transaction. A debt. A possession.
“You can’t own loyalty,” I say quietly. “You earn it. That’s the one thing you’ve never understood.”
A flicker behind my father’s eyes recalculates the odds. “Then we’re done talking.” The words land flat, final, the voice of a man closing a ledger.
The first of Father’s enforcers tears away from the wall before the echo of his voice has faded. The others move with him, weapons flashing beneath the amber light as they spread through the room, cutting me off from Miro before I can take more than a step towards her.
“Resh.”
The single word is enough. My males surge forward and the room erupts.
Steel collides with steel, the impact reverberating through the polished floor as bodies crash together.
Someone cries out. Another male answers with a curse that ends abruptly beneath the wet sound of a blade finding flesh. I don’t look to see who fell.
The only thing that matters is the female struggling against Father’s guards.
A sword sweeps towards my throat. The edge skims across the scales beneath my jaw as my claws drive beneath the male’s ribs. Wet heat bursts over my hand. His body folds around the wound before I wrench myself free and keep moving, stepping over him before he’s finished collapsing.
Another enforcer fills the space he’d left. Father has always trained his males to fight as a unit. One falls back as the next steps in, keeping me from reaching Miro.
My female twists violently against the guard restraining her, throwing all her weight sideways.
The guard stumbles, his grip slipping just enough for her to nearly wrench loose — before he snarls and lashes out, embedding his claws into her shoulder and dragging her back against his much larger form.
She doesn’t stop fighting even when she’s hurt and bleeding. She drives her heel backwards into his shin, lashes out with her free hand, struggles with everything she has left even though she’s hopelessly outmatched.
Incandescent rage tears through me. I will get to my female. The next male never lands his strike. I catch his sword arm, crush his wrist with my grip, and throw him into the two rushing in behind him. They go down in a tangle of limbs and steel, giving me the opening I’d been trying to force.
Blood slicks beneath my boots as I drive through the gap, every instinct fixed on the narrowing distance between Miro and me.
Another blade bites across my side. Steel drags through flesh, and warmth spreads beneath my shirt, but the wound barely registers.
Pain has become background noise. If I don’t reach her now, I lose her.
Father steps towards Miro, the steel rising beneath her jaw as his fist buries itself in her hair and jerks her head back.
I launch myself at my father, claws extended, and rip through his throat.
Hot blood explodes over my face as his head yanks sideways.
His mouth opens, a wet, choking sound bubbling through the ruin of his throat.
His amber eyes lock onto mine, flaring in surprise.
His lips move as he chokes on his own blood before awareness fades from his eyes and he slides to the ground.
I spin on the balls of my feet, driving my blade into the neck of the enforcer clutching Miro. His body jerks, fingers spasming as blood fountains over us. The tip bursts out the other side of his neck. He’s dead before his hands loosen from around Miro.
I seize Miro around the waist and wrench her clear. She stumbles into me, shaking hard, and I wrap her against my chest, one hand cradling the back of her head while I put my body between her and the rest of the room.
She’s breathing.
Gods…
She’s alive.
“Miro.” I clamp my hands on her cheeks, force her head back, leaving smears of blood on her pale skin. “Miro. Look at me.”
Blood streaks across her face, some of it hers, most of it not.
She catches hold of the front of my jacket with both hands as though she’s afraid I’ll disappear if she lets go.
She leans into me, searching my face with frantic little glances that tell me she’s checking for injuries as surely as I’m searching hers.
Even now. After everything she’s been through…
She’s worried about me.
I brush the dried blood away from the corner of her mouth with my thumb as gently as I can. She winces when my fingers stray too close to her shoulder, and I stop, forcing myself not to touch it again.
“They hurt you.” The words come out low enough that I barely recognise my own voice. “They don’t get to hurt you and live.”
A weapon clatters onto the floor behind me. Resh’s voice cuts through the office, sharp and controlled as he orders the surviving enforcers to stand down. My father is dead. There is no longer any loyalty to fight for.
Only then do I force myself to look away from Miro.
Furniture lies shattered across the floor. Blood pools beneath bodies that won’t be rising again. The metallic smell hangs so thick in the air I can taste it with every breath.
My father lies where he fell. His eyes stare sightlessly towards the ceiling, blood spreading beneath him, washing across the polished stone.
I look at him for a long moment, waiting to feel something.
Relief.
Triumph.
Regret.
There’s nothing. My only reality is Miro in my arms, gripping my jacket. Holding me as tightly as I hold her.
Resh steps over Father’s body before lowering himself onto one knee before me. His elbow rests on his knee as he lowers his eyes. He’s covered in blood, several slashes across the backs of his hands. “My lord.”
The words settle over me with surprising weight. One of Father’s oldest lieutenants slides his sword back into its sheath. His eyes linger on the body at my feet before he bows his head and lowers himself onto one knee beside Resh. One after another they follow.
My father is dead. The House is mine. There is no victory in that realization.
My eyes sweep the office a second time before another truth lands. Kazren is not here. The coward has run. Of course he has.
He let other males bleed while he hid behind Father’s authority, and when that failed him he slipped away into the House, leaving everyone else to die in his place. He manipulated us both from the shadows, threatened Miro, and turned my own father into the shield he was too weak to be himself.
The anger that settles inside me is colder than anything I carried into this room. He won’t disappear. He won’t outrun me.
“Resh.” He lifts his eyes, his gaze steady. “Seal every exit from this House. Lock down every transport. I don’t care where Kazren’s hiding. Find my brother.”