Page 20 of Nansar
I held her gaze, refusing to look away even as shame threatened to make me. "I helped plan an assassination attempt on my father, Duke Ako."
Her lips parted in shock, color draining from her cheeks. "Your own father?"
"Yes." The confession tasted bitter on my tongue. "I'm not going to make excuses for what I did. I should have known better, been stronger. I allowed someone I thought was an ally to use my insecurities about my human mother, twisting them into something poisonous."
I swallowed hard, the shame of it still fresh even after all this time, a wound that refused to fully heal, that festered in the darkest corners of my soul. "I let him fill me with hatred. I letmyself believe the lies he fed me. And I nearly killed the one person who always loved me unconditionally."
Chloe was quiet for a long moment, her eyes searching my face with an expression that made my horns tingle. When she finally spoke, her voice was soft. "And now?"
"Now I'm paying for it. Gladly." I straightened my shoulders, forcing myself to hold her gaze even as vulnerability clawed at my chest. "The sentence is just. I deserve every bit of it. I'm grateful that my father forgave me. That we reconciled. I don't deserve his forgiveness, but he gave it anyway."
"How long?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. "How long is your sentence?"
"Fifty years."
Her eyes widened, lips parting in dismay. "Fifty—" She shook her head, and something in her expression made my heart clench. "You'll be an old man when you get out."
Despite everything, I felt a slight smile tug at my lips. "Not really. My kind—the Aljani—we live much longer than humans. Three hundred years, typically. Fifty years is... significant, but not a lifetime. Not for us."
She fell quiet again, her brow furrowed in thought, and I found myself memorizing the way the dappled sunlight played across her features. Then she took a step closer—close enough that I could smell the sweet scent of her skin beneath the grime—and her expression softened in a way that made my chest tighten almost painfully.
"Thank you."
I blinked, caught off guard. "For what?"
"For telling me the truth." She glanced back toward the jungle, then met my eyes again with an expression that sent heat radiating through my horns and down my spine. "And for coming to help me."
"You needed help," I said, though my voice came out rough, betraying the effect she had on me. "And despite what I've done, I'm still trying to be better than I was."
The tingling sensation spread through my horns again, more insistent this time, a warmth that radiated into my skull and pooled low in my belly. I resisted the urge to rub at the base of them, forcing myself to turn back toward the creek instead, putting necessary distance between us before I did something foolish. Before I reached for her the way every instinct was screaming at me to do.
"The water looks safe," I told her, my voice more gruff than necessary as I fought to regain control. "You can drink and wash. Really clean your wound. Just stay away from the reeds—sometimes the cipic hide in the roots."
I needed to focus on getting her to safety. Not on the way her presence made my blood sing. Not on whatever biological nonsense my body was trying to convince me of. She was human. Vulnerable. Under my protection only because circumstances had thrown us together.
And I was a prisoner, condemned to this place long after she would become nothing more than a bittersweet memory.
Chapter 7
Chloe
I stared at Nansar, trying to reconcile what he'd just told me. A prisoner. Someone the universe had locked away.
It should have frightened me. Should have sent me running in the opposite direction. But standing there, watching the way he held himself—shoulders squared, chin level, meeting my gaze without flinching—I felt something else entirely. There was a quiet dignity in his confession, a raw honesty that cut through all my defenses.
And then it hit me. The contrast. The bitter, twisted irony of it all.
Nansar stood before me, admitting his past without excuses or justifications. Meanwhile, Declan Hewes walked free. Declan, who I knew—knew—had destroyed lives. Who'd hurt people in ways that left scars you couldn't see. Who wore thousand-dollar suits and smiled for cameras at charity galas while his victims suffered in silence.
Declan had never seen the inside of a cell. Never faced a judge. Never paid for a single goddamn thing he'd done, because money and connections built better walls than any prison.
When I looked at Declan, all I saw was a monster wearing human skin.
When I looked at Nansar, I saw someone who'd faced consequences. Who carried the weight of his actions in the set of his shoulders, in the careful way he chose his words. There wasremorse there. Real remorse. The kind that changed you from the inside out.
"You don't seem like..." I started, then stopped, unsure how to finish without sounding like an idiot.
"Like a criminal?" A slight smile tugged at his mouth, though it didn't quite reach those blue-green eyes. The expression softened his features, made him look less like an alien warrior and more like... just a man. "I suppose that depends on who's writing the laws. Yes, I did what they accused me of. But I'm not that male anymore."
