“Serenity One.”

Serenity One.

Sovereign Sanctum’s room.

The room with all the high-end equipment that you’d never typically find in a regular doctor’s office. A place where we could bring the most fragile and broken when we couldn’t risk taking them to a public emergency room.

I busted through the door without pause, pulse stampeding through my veins as I pushed into the room, so overcome when I saw her sitting up on the side of the examination table that there were no reservations left.

Nothing stopping me from going directly to her and taking her gorgeous face in my hands.

Fire scorched through my body the second I did.

“Emery.” It rasped out of me.

A question.

A promise.

A million things in that one single word, which wasn’t all that surprising since she’d come to mean everything.

Tears blurred her eyes. “Kane.”

“I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry. Are you okay?” I searched her face.

She nodded in my hold. “I’m fine.”

“Are you in pain?”

“My head hurts a little, but it’s nothing significant. I just?—”

“Who was this fucker?” It ripped out of me.

Terror swam in those toffee eyes.

“I don’t know. I didn’t see him.” Her words lurched and faltered. “He came from out of nowhere. I…I felt something. Something off. That same feeling I mentioned last night. I thought I was just being paranoid, Kane. I thought…”

Fear clogged her voice, hitching the words she couldn’t force off her tongue.

Rage burned me through.

A firestorm.

The cataclysmic type.

The kind that decimated everything in its wake.

“We’ll find him. I promise you, we’ll find him.” I pulled her against me, hugging her tight. Swore to God, those thin, slight arms that wrapped around my waist were the best thing that I’d ever felt.

“I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise.” I murmured it at the top of her head.

The second I said it, she let the horror go, and she clung to me as she started to sob.

No doubt, the adrenaline and fear breaking loose of the dam once she knew she was safe.

“It’s okay, baby. Let it out. You’re safe. You’re safe.” The promises kept pouring out as I held her there, standing at the edge of that examination table while it felt like pieces of my life were falling away and others were coming together.

A knitting.