Chapter 94

• Author's POV
• Alpha Damian’s return to Nightshade was the kind of entrance that makes the ground feel wrong beneath you — heavy, jagged, full of splinters. The carriage had hardly stopped when he strode from it, every line of his body taut with something like molten shame. The memory of the courtyard rode his skin: a man brought to his knees, the sting of blood in his mouth, the unbearable humiliation of being bested — and worst of all, being spared only because Rose, the woman he wanted, had pleaded. The thought of her voice begging for his life lodged in him like a splinter that would not be removed.
• He had been overthrown by a man who, on paper, should not have overthrown him. Kavian — not a mountain of muscle, not the obvious juggernaut — had moved against him with a calmness that cut Damian more deeply than a blade. And when Kavian had said the terms, when Damian, stripped of pride and glaring with raw fury, answered with a single, humbling “Yes,” the shame sank in so deep it felt like rot in his bones.