Chapter 16

Serena’s POV

I didn’t sleep.

Even with Ari safe, breathing gently beside me in the softest bed I’d ever touched—my body wouldn’t rest.

Not while the woman who tried to hurt him still breathed down the hall.

Not while the man who’d thrown us away two years ago stood at our door like a guard dog that finally remembered what it was supposed to protect.

I sat by the window, watching the horizon shift from black to blue, waiting for the courage that had never truly left me.

Kael had claimed Ari.

And I’d seen the pain it cost him. The weight of it. The truth hitting him like a blade to the ribs.

But that didn’t erase what he’d done.

A father claiming his son isn’t redemption.

It’s the bare minimum.

—

By morning, I’d made up my mind.

Ari stirred beside me, and I bent low, kissing his damp curls. His skin was cooler now, his breathing steady. But his body was still weak.

He needed peace. Safety. A mother’s love, not politics.

And definitely not a mansion where