“I’m scared, princess,” he whispers into my hair, the sound muffled in the cloud of my curls. “He’s a monster who has laid waste to my dreams more than once. Everything good I’ve ever had in my life, he’s taken from me. And now that we’re here—” He pauses, and I feel him swallow hard, fighting back the emotion working its way up his throat. “I have more to lose than I ever have before. I have you again. I have a family again. I don’t want to lose this.”
