Page 17 of Shadowkissed

Everything about him is heat and control. Rage bottled under skin. The kind of man who doesn’t need to say he’ll fight for you. You justknow.

But that’s a lie. No one fights for me.

Not against Seraphiel.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I whisper.

“You’re bleeding.”

“I can handle it.”

“No,” he says, stepping forward. “You can’t.”

He reaches for me.

I go to pull away, to disappear into the shadows, but I can’t. I have nothing left. Not after the fight. Instead, when I try, my vision gets blurry and my knees give out, the pain now throbbing full force of what I just went through.

Before I can do anything more, I feel his arms around me, catching me before everything goes dark.

8

DANTE

She collapses before I even reach her.

One second she’s upright, defiant, glowing with shadow and power and blood—and the next, her knees buckle, and I lunge forward on instinct.

“Shit—hey, hey—” I catch her just before she hits the ground, her body soft and hot against my chest, breath shallow and ragged.

Up close, she smells like burnt magic and rain-drenched moss. Not perfume. Not glamor.Real.

I lower her gently to the alley floor, already scanning the wound. Shit. The gash at her hip’s still leaking—deep, clean, not fatal, but nasty. The kind of cut made by something that wasn’t meant to just hurt but toclaim.

Who the hell did this to her?

She’s out cold, lips parted, lashes dark against her cheekbones. Her runes are flickering now, dulling back to skin, but they’re still alive—shifting in slow, restless patterns like they know I’m watching.

Fae.

It hits me again like a punch in the ribs.

She’sfae.

Not just touched by magic or trained in it—born from it. Blood and bone and breath soaked in spells older than this city. And yet here she is, half-broken in my arms, like something wild that forgot how to be dangerous.

“Damn you,” I mutter, lifting her with one arm under her knees, the other bracing her back.

I should walk away.

Ishould.

But I can’t.

I don’t know if it’s her or me or something else entirely—something old and buried andangry—but the pull is there again. Low and insistent. Like she’s a thread I’ve been tied to and yanking it would unravel both of us.

So I take her.

I don’t take her to PEACE. Too risky. Too many eyes. Too many questions I don’t want to answer.

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