Page 123 of The Vagabond

“You’re safe now,” he whispers, as he presses me into his chest. “You’re safe.”

I want to say something.

But all I can do is stare at him—this bloodied, unrecognizable version of the man who sees and understands every crevice of my darkness, because it so clearly mirrors his own. He cradles my face, searching for injuries.Can’t he see that the biggest injury I have is to that vessel in my chest?His thumb brushes my cheek. That’s when I feel it. The tear. Just one. Sliding down my face like the blood on his.

“I saw you,” I whisper, voice raw. “I saw what you did.”

He stiffens.

“I don’t want you to be afraid of me,” he says, voice breaking on the words.

I pause. And then I shake my head, just once.

“I’m not,” I whisper. “I’m afraid of what I felt when you did it.”

His breath hitches. And then he pulls me into him, arms wrapping around me so tight I feel like I might dissolve. The room is a slaughterhouse. But in his arms? It almost feels like home.

The air outsidehits my skin like I’ve never felt wind before.

Cold. Open.Free.

I should be crying. I should be screaming. But my body is too numb to register anything except the way Saxon holds me—arms tight, one under my knees, one behind my back, like I weigh nothing at all.

I don’t even know when he lifted me from the ground. One minute I was watching blood drip down the walls, the next… I was in his arms. Against his chest. Wrapped in his scent—gunpowder, sweat, dark rage.

“I’ve got you,” he keeps whispering.

Like if he says it enough, it’ll erase everything they did to me. Everything I’ve been. Everything I’ve survived.

“You’re safe now.”

But that’s not the part that undoes me. It’s the next words.

“No one will ever touch you again.”

His voice is low. Steel and silk that wraps around me like a promise. A threat to the world.

He presses his mouth to my temple, and I feel his breath tremble. And all I can think—through the pain and the blood and the way my heart still stutters when I look at him—is:

What kind of girl falls in love with a man who would kill for her?

Because that’s what this is, isn’t it? He carved a path through my prison with my name in his mouth and murder in his veins. He slaughtered men like they were nothing. He made men bleed just for looking at me the wrong way. And I didn’t look away. Iwatched it all. And the sickest part? The part I’m terrified to say out loud? I felt safe. I felt vindicated.

Loved in a way I don’t know how to accept. In a way that’s all teeth and fire and hands that don’t shake when they hold a gun for you, seeking your revenge.

What kind of girl loves that? Me, apparently.

Saxon carries me through the wreckage, his arms locked around me like he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he loosens his grip. His jaw is tight. Eyes forward. Blood—some of it his, most of it not—splatters his shirt, streaks down his forearms.

We pass through the edge of the estate, moving over bodies. Some are facedown, unmoving. Others are sprawled like they died mid-run, limbs bent at the wrong angles. Throats open. Chests caved in. The ground’s soaked in blood, and the air is heavy with the scent of gunpowder.

Scar is first. He stands over a body, fingers slack around a pistol. Kanyan flanks him, dragging someone’s corpse by the collar, with Lucky trailing behind.

They see Saxon and step aside, giving him space. Which says everything. These men—killers, soldiers, men who barely tolerate Saxon North on a good day—I never thought I’d see them in the same room without a fistfight or a gun drawn. Now they’re clearing a path for him like it’s owed.

Scar’s the only one who speaks.

“We’ve got a problem.”

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