Will you marry me, Miss Aurora?” A six-year-old boy asked me that question while I was hiding in a restaurant storage room from the men who had come to collect me like property. I laughed and said yes—never imagining that seconds later, his father would walk through the door, and I would realize I had just promised myself to the son of the most feared mafia boss on the East Coast.

The heavy utility door was violently kicked off its hinges, crashing onto the concrete floor with a deafening boom.

Through the cloud of dust and gunsmoke stepped Kian.

He was covered in blood—none of it his own. His eyes were wide, crimson-rimmed, and filled with a primal, unhinged fury that looked entirely inhuman. In his right hand, he held a black tactical pistol, smoke still curling from the barrel. Behind him, the hallway was littered with the fallen bodies of Marco’s men.

When Kian’s eyes landed on me slumping against the wall, clutching my bloody shoulder while holding a crying Zayn, his weapon dropped to his side.

“Aurora…” he breathed, his voice cracking with an emotion I had never heard from him before.

He was at my side in a fraction of a second, crashing onto his knees on the concrete. He gathered both of us into his massive, shaking arms, pulling us so tightly against his chest I could feel the violent, chaotic hammering of his heart.

“Dad!” Zayn cried, burying his face in Kian’s neck. “They shot Miss Aurora! She saved me!”

Kian lowered his head against my hair, his breath coming in ragged, painful gasps. “I’m here. I’m here. I’ve got you.”

He gently pulled back, his large hands trembling as he inspected the gunshot wound on my shoulder. His gray eyes, usually so calculating and cold, were drowning in pure, unadulterated anguish.

“Why did you do that?” he whispered, his voice thick with emotion. “You were supposed to hide. You should have saved yourself—”

I offered him a weak, pale smile, reaching up with my trembling right hand to touch his blood-splattered cheek. “Knights… protect their prince, Kian…”

His eyes filled with tears. He leaned down, pressing his lips passionately against mine in front of the ruins of the hallway. It wasn't a cold kiss of a contract, or a polite touch of a fake engagement. It was a desperate, fierce vow born from the depths of a man’s broken soul.

Ten minutes later, the entire borough of Manhattan was under lockdown as Kian’s private medical helicopter landed directly on the roof of the medical building.

I passed out from blood loss shortly after being lifted onto the gantry.

When I finally woke up, the soft hum of heart monitors greeted my ears. The smell of antiseptic filled the air, and soft sunlight filtered through white lace curtains. I was back in the master suite of the Moretti estate, hooked up to an IV drip.

Beside my bed sat Kian.

He looked as if he hadn't slept in days. His eyes were bloodshot, stubble darkened his jaw, and he was still wearing the same dark trousers, though he had changed into a clean black shirt. He was holding my uninjured right hand tightly in both of his, resting his forehead against my knuckles.

“Kian…?” I rasped out softly.

He flinched, instantly lifting his head. The relief that washed over his face was blinding.

“You’re awake,” he breathed, gently pressing his lips to my knuckles over and over again. “Thank God. The doctor said the bullet passed clean through the tissue, but you lost a lot of blood.”

“Zayn… where is Zayn?”

“He’s sleeping in the next room,” Kian assured me gently. “He refused to leave the estate until he knew you were okay. He’s fine, Aurora. Because of you.”

I relaxed back onto the plush pillows. “What happened to Marco?”

Kian’s face instantly darkened into an expression of ruthless finality.

“Marco, Tony, and your stepmother Regina were intercepted at an abandoned airfield in New Jersey three hours ago,” Kian said coldly. “Marco and Tony are no longer among the living. As for Regina…” He paused, his gray eyes burning with cold vengeance. “I handed her over to federal authorities along with twenty years’ worth of financial fraud and human trafficking records. She will spend the rest of her life in a federal prison cell, where she will never see the sun again.”

I closed my eyes, letting the reality of his words wash over me. The monsters of my past were gone. Permanently.

“Why did you do all of this, Kian?” I whispered, turning my head to look at him. “A fake engagement wasn't worth risking your entire empire.”

Kian stood up, slowly leaning over the bed until his face was inches from mine. He raised a hand, his long fingers tenderly tracing the outline of my cheek.

“Because it was never fake to me, Aurora,” he confessed softly, his voice trembling with raw vulnerability. “When my wife left three years ago, I swore I would lock my heart away forever. I thought I was taking you in to protect my son. But the moment I saw you in that storage room, standing tall with a frying pan against the world… I knew I was looking at the only woman who could ever fix my broken soul.”