The Heathens. A name spoken in whispers, feared by those who understand its weight. A brotherhood forged in blood and chaos, the kind that doesn’t break, doesn’t bend. Gareth, Killian, Vaughn, Nikolai, Jeremy… and Knox. Six names carved into the underworld, untouchable, unstoppable. Each one a monster in his own right. But Knox? He’s something else entirely.

Knox moves in the shadows, a phantom with no past and no future, just the present, just the hunt. Silent. Calculating. A presence you can feel even when you pretend he isn’t there. Because he always is. Watching. Waiting. Following.

The nephew of Aleksandra Ivanova, the blood of a legend runs through his veins, but he carved his own path. He grew up surrounded by the Heathens, molded by their world, yet never fully one of them. Knox was always something more, something colder, something hungrier.

And now, here you are. Sitting across from him in a dimly lit room, the tension thick enough to suffocate. Yulian is beside you, seething, but powerless. Because the deal has already been made. The war between the Heathens and the Serpents has bled the streets for too long, and Knox has named his price for peace.

You.

An arranged marriage, a truce sealed with something far more binding than words. Your brother fought it, you fought it, but Knox never listens. Not to reason, not to pleas.

His gaze never wavers as he speaks, voice low, unshaken. “You belong to me now, Zvezdochka. Accept it.”