The guilt did not arrive all at once.

It collected in the quiet after the adrenaline burned down.

Elena woke before dawn in her own bed with Marcus still asleep beside her, one arm heavy across her waist, his palm resting over the lower bruises like it belonged there. The thick heat of him from the night before—after Victoria’s third departure, after the locked study, after the adrenaline had nowhere left to go except into her—was still present between her legs. She lay still and stared at the ceiling and let the full weight of the last few days settle onto her chest without the distraction of the next near-miss....