Warmth Amid the Ashes

Seraphina Cross spent three years as a dutiful wife, keeping the household in perfect order. Her husband was a good man—gentle, attentive—yet he could never give her the one thing she wanted most: a child. She secretly went for a checkup. The problem wasn't with her. That secret lodged in her throat like a thorn; she couldn't bring herself to hurt him with the truth. And so, on a dating app, she met Julian Ashworth, a man carrying danger in his eyes. Now she sat in a private booth at a café, her palms slick with sweat. She thought she had only come to unburden herself, never realizing that step by step, she was walking down a path with no return.