Chapter 7

Dominic’s POV

“Get out.”

The words had come out of my mouth with ease. Giving no room for argument, clean and final. 

But she was barely out the door before my hand—the one holding the glass—started to shake.

I sat in my study now, alone, the way I preferred to be. The whiskey was still full. I had not touched it. I had been staring at it for forty minutes, watching the amber liquid sit perfectly still in the glass while everything inside me was the opposite of still.

I could still smell the fire if I let myself. Gasoline and smoke. And underneath both of those… jasmine.

Scarlett screaming my name with her hands stretched toward me while the chains kept her just out of reach. The flames climbing her legs and the heat tearing through the warehouse while Luca stood there smiling.

And I could not move.

Because Luca's men had put three bullets in me.Because my body had already begun the slow, humiliating work of dying.

“If there is a next life… do not choose him, Scarlett.” Those had been my last words to her.

I had meant them, I had loved her when I said them and I had died loving her.

Which was the most humiliating thing that had ever happened to me. Because she had poisoned my whiskey, handed my pack documents to my son and looked me in the eye while doing it.

And then I woke up.

Same morning.

Same bed.

Same gray light slipping through the curtains.

I lay there on my back for ten minutes, staring at the ceiling, replaying every memory piece by piece like a man scanning his hands through his pocket—making sure nothing had been stolen from his mind.

Everything was still there.

The betrayal, the fire, her scream, every single second I remember it all.

The Goddess had sent me back too.

I got up, dressed and told no one.

I sat at my desk and waited to see what Scarlett Vance would do.

That was three weeks ago.

Now I set the untouched whiskey glass down on the desk and leaned back in my chair. The leather creaked beneath my weight.

My wolf was pacing.

He had been pacing since the lounge.

Since she walked in carrying that tray, those soft eyes lifting toward me, her voice sliding over the room when she called me Daddy.

A voice designed to break a man’s discipline.

It had almost worked.

That was the part I could not forgive.

Not her for trying it.

Me… for how close I had come to letting it happen.

She had stumbled into me and I had caught her waist. Three seconds of her weight pressed against my body and my wolf had lunged inside my chest like an animal slamming itself against iron bars.

Three seconds.

Three seconds and I had nearly forgotten everything.

What she had done.

What she was capable of doing again.

Nearly.

I stood abruptly, sitting still tonight felt impossible.

I crossed the study and stopped at the window.

Meanwhile, the territory stretched into darkness outside. 

Tall black trees.

Security lights cutting bright lines along the perimeter fence.

Two of my bikers rode slow patrol along the outer road, their engines rumbling through the quiet like distant thunder.

My land.

My pack.

My responsibility.

And she had chosen Luca again.

That thought sat in my chest like something with teeth.

She had woken up with every memory I had.

She had watched him burn her alive.

Watched him walk away while she screamed.

And when the Goddess handed her another morning…

She climbed out of his bed.