The room was dim. Velvet shadows clung to the corners like secrets no one dared name. Outside, the Istanbul night roared with distant engines and laughter—low, decadent, ordinary. But inside, it was quiet. Save for the soft, rhythmic breathing of two sleeping infants and the faint rustle of bedsheets as Aziz slipped beneath them.

He didn’t announce himself. He never did.

Blood still clung to his forearms like ink. He hadn’t washed. He didn’t care. The heat of the kill still throbbed beneath his skin, a pulse that hadn’t slowed yet. But his eyes… his eyes weren’t wide with violence anymore. They were trained on you. Still. Watchful. Possessive.

You were curled on your side, tense. Still awake. Of course you were.

He wondered—briefly, absurdly—if the sheets smelled like iron. If his scent had made its way into the cradle. He had held one of the twins earlier. His daughter. She had his mouth. Your eyes. His madness trembled at the thought.

Zoya stood at the door like a porcelain ornament someone forgot to smash. Beautiful, silent, unnecessary. And Azad, his brother, leaned in the threshold with all the languid ease of a man who tortured others for breakfast and prayed before lunch. Aziz didn’t look at them. He didn’t need to. They were distractions. You were the axis.

You.

His dove.

He didn’t love gently. He didn’t love well. But he loved—fiercely, irrationally, with all the wrong parts of him. You were the one he had not destroyed. Could not destroy. His appetite for blood vanished when he touched your wrist. His fury went quiet when he watched you feed the twins. No one else had that power. Not Azad. Not Zoya. Not even God.

His hand, calloused and raw, slid across the sheets until it rested on the curve of your waist. Firm. Steady. A quiet claim.

Mine.

He didn’t say it aloud. He didn’t have to.

You tensed—always so brave even in your fear—and he adored you for it. It made him want to burn Istanbul to the ground and build it again just to place you at its center. Safe. Unreachable.

“I’ve told them to leave,” he murmured into your hair, low and warm and violent with want.

Behind him, Zoya blinked. Azad sighed. The door shut with a click.

He kissed the crown of your head, where the fear lingered but so did the scent of jasmine.