Jaxon finds her alone.
“Get out.”
The words crack like a whip through the empty strategy room, making Aria jump. She turns from the floor-to-ceiling window just as the door slams shut behind him. He stands there—huge, blood-spattered, breathing hard like he’s just dragged himself out of a war zone. His shirt is torn at the shoulder. There’s a cut on his cheekbone, another at his jaw. His knuckles are raw.
“Jaxon,” she breathes, stepping forward. “You’re hurt—”
“I said get out,” he repeats, but this time his eyes stay pinned to her, sharp and furious. “Of his head.”
She freezes. “What?”
He stalks closer, each step heavy, controlled, dangerous. Jaxon has always felt like the sane one in Wolfe Tower, the steady shadow behind Damian’s storm. Right now, that steadiness is gone. Rage hangs off him like smoke.
“You think this is a game?” he demands. “You think you can keep looking at him like that and walk away clean?”
Aria’s throat tightens. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t lie to me,” he snaps.
He’s never spoken to her like that—never turned that hard, cutting tone on her. For a second, she almost prefers Damian’s cruelty. At least she expects it from him.
“I’m not lying,” she whispers. “I’m just— I’m just trying to survive.”
“Yeah?” Jaxon stops less than a foot away, looming over her. “Because from where I’m standing, you’re not surviving. You’re dragging him down with you.”
The words hit harder than they should. “Dragging him—? You think I asked for any of this? I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want the collar, the tower, the Syndicate—”
“You think I don’t know that?” he cuts in, voice low and lethal. “You think I don’t know Navarro kept you in his own kind of cage? I do. I know what that bastard did. I know what Damian went through too. That’s why I’m here, Aria. That’s why I’m standing in front of you instead of walking out and letting him burn himself alive.”
Her chest aches. “Then say what you came to say.”
Jaxon’s jaw flexes. For a heartbeat, he looks almost conflicted. Then he exhales sharply, like ripping off a bandage.
“He hasn’t slept in weeks,” Jaxon says. “Not real sleep. Thirty minutes here, twenty there, if we’re lucky. He won’t eat unless I put food in front of him and stand there until he finishes it. You know what he does instead?”
Aria swallows. “What?”
“He sits in that damn war room,” Jaxon grinds out, “rereading every piece of intel we have on Navarro. Every photo. Every file. Every bloody report. Over and over like torture. Like if he stares at it long enough, the past is going to bleed through the paper and give him answers he didn’t get when he was a kid locked in a cage.”
Her breath catches. She pictures Damian hunched over a table, the screens flickering blue against his face, those cold eyes carved hollow by ghosts.
“Why?” she whispers.
Jaxon laughs once, humorless and vicious. “Why do you think? Because your father made him. Because every time Damian looks at you, he sees Navarro’s legacy—and every time you flinch, every time you look at him like he’s something more than a monster, he doesn’t know what the hell to do with himself.”
“That’s not my fault,” Aria says, but the words sound weak, even to her.
“No,” Jaxon agrees. “It’s not your fault. But it is your impact.”
She turns away, arms wrapping around herself, as if she can hold her ribs together against the pressure building behind them. “You’re saying I should have left when I had the chance.”
“I’m saying he’s not built for this.” Jaxon’s voice drops. “For you. For… feelings.” He makes the word sound like a weapon. “He’s built for blood and obedience and revenge. Nothing else. He clawed his way out of Navarro’s cages by becoming something worse than what put him there. You… undo that. You put cracks in the monster he built. And he doesn’t know how to exist with those cracks.”
Aria shuts her eyes. The room feels smaller. The city beyond the glass is just lights and noise, none of it able to reach this high.
“What happened to you?” she asks quietly. “Why are you covered in blood?”
“Mission went sideways.” Jaxon shrugs, though the motion makes him wince. “Another safehouse, another set of men who thought saying Sabrina’s name would protect them.” His gaze sharpens on her. “But this isn’t about me. This is about what happens next.”
She forces herself to turn back to him. “Then say it.”
He steps closer again, crowding her back toward the window, not enough to touch—but enough that she feels boxed in by his presence and by his words.
“He will burn the whole city to keep you in his hands,” Jaxon says quietly. “Do you understand me, Aria? The whole city. Every family. Every neutral zone. Every ally. He is two steps from pulling the trigger on a war that won’t stop at the Syndicate’s borders. And it’s not because of Navarro. Not really. It’s because of you.”
“That’s not fair,” she whispers. “I never asked him to—”
“I know you didn’t.” Jaxon’s eyes soften just a fraction. “You don’t have to ask. That’s the problem. You walk into a room and his gun hand loosens. You scream, and he hears you over an explosion. You bleed, and he doesn’t stop until whoever did it is paint on the pavement. You exist, and the calculus he’s lived by for twenty years stops working.”
Her vision blurs. She blinks hard. “So what, Jaxon? What do you want from me? To hate him? To push him away? To leave again and hope this time I die before he finds me?”
His jaw clenches. “I want you to understand what you’re holding when you touch him,” he says. “He’s not a man who can love like normal people do. When he attaches, he chains. When he protects, he kills. When he chooses, he sets fire to everything he doesn’t choose.” He pauses, then adds, quieter, “And he’s already chosen you.”
Aria’s heart slams against her ribs. “That’s not love,” she says hoarsely.
“I never said it was,” Jaxon replies. “I said it’s what he has. It’s what he knows how to give.”
Silence stretches between them, taut and painful.
“My father locked me in dark rooms during storms,” Aria murmurs suddenly. “To ‘teach me strength.’ To ‘toughen me up.’ Nobody came when I cried.” Her throat tightens. “Damian did. He sat in that room with me while the thunder shook the glass. He didn’t have to. He shouldn’t have. But he did.”
Jaxon’s expression flickers. “Yeah,” he says softly. “That’s the part that scares me.”
“Why?” she asks.
“Because it means there’s still a boy in there,” he says. “And boys can break in ways monsters don’t.”
Her chest aches so badly it feels like something might crack. “What am I supposed to do?” she whispers. “I’m already trapped. If I stay, I’m the reason he burns everything. If I go, he burns everything looking for me.”
Jaxon exhales, rough and tired. For a moment, he looks older than he is, like the weight of too many bodies and too many wars sits on his shoulders.
“I don’t have an answer for you,” he admits. “I’m not here with some grand plan. I’m here because I just watched him walk into gunfire like it was nothing, and the only thing that made him stop was the thought of you bleeding. I’m here because he hasn’t looked me in the eye in days, but he tracks your every move like his heartbeat depends on it.” He hesitates, then adds, “I’m here because… if you care about him at all, you need to know what loving you is doing to him.”
Aria’s breath stutters. “I didn’t say I—”
“You didn’t have to,” Jaxon says quietly. “I saw your face when you thought he wasn’t coming back from that last meeting. I saw your hands shaking after you pulled the shrapnel from his shoulder. You’re as gone for him as he is for you, Aria. You just don’t know what that means yet.”
Her spine presses against the glass. Outside, lightning flickers faintly on the horizon, a distant storm echoing the one inside the tower.
“What happens if he loses?” she asks, voice barely a thread. “If the Syndicate wins? If Sabrina wins?”
Jaxon’s mouth flattens. “You don’t want that answer.”
“Tell me.”
“Then he dies bloody,” Jaxon says. “And they take you. Maybe they trade you. Maybe they carve you up as a message to everyone who thought a Wolfe could fall in love.” His gaze hardens. “That’s the future you walk toward when you sneak out ‘to stop the chaos.’ That’s what you flirt with every time you put yourself between him and the bullets.”
Tears sting her eyes. “And if he wins?”
Jaxon looks at her for a long, long moment.
“If he wins,” he says quietly, “there won’t be much left of this city. But you’ll still be in his hands.” He shakes his head once. “You’re the only thing he won’t burn.”
The words land like a verdict.
Aria wraps her arms around herself, not to hold in the fear—but to hold in the way her heart breaks and heals in the same breath. “Thank you,” she whispers. “For telling me the truth.”
Jaxon exhales sharply, like he doesn’t think she should thank him for this. He moves toward the door, every line of him still drawn tight, still buzzing with battle.
At the threshold, he pauses and glances back over his shoulder. “One more thing,” he says.
She looks up. “What?”
“If you ever decide to walk away again,” Jaxon says, “don’t leave a collar on the floor this time. It almost killed him.”
Her breath catches. He doesn’t wait for an answer. The door shuts behind him with a soft, final click, leaving Aria alone with the echo of his warning and the realization that Damian isn’t the only one who’s already burning.