KNOX’S POV

“Thank you.” He’s staring straight ahead, and his voice is steady, and there’s something in it I’ve never heard from him before—something almost peaceful. “For the mercy of it.”

“Mercy.” The word comes out flat and disbelieving. “I’m putting you in a cell for the rest of your natural life, Nathaniel. That is not mercy.”

“It is, though.” He turns to face me. “Knox. If I had done what I did to any other man alive—drugged him, engineered the deaths of sixty-three of his people, his mate included, looked him in the eye and lied to him for a decade—I would already be dead. You’d have killed me...