It was not enough, and everyone in the room understood that it was not enough, and that was the moment, if Marisela is honest, that a thing inside her which had been holding on for two years quietly let go.

Not with grief, not yet.

Just a clean, cold click, like a latch.

Because she had not truly needed Dane to defend her from the collar; she was entirely capable of defending herself and their daughter from far worse than Sabetha Ashworth.

What she had needed was simply to see, once and for all and beyond any further arguing with herself, whether the man she had married would stand beside her or would study his shoes while his mother put a dog collar next to their child.

Now she knew.