Mag-log inAria's POVThe silence stretched so long that I could hear my own breathing, every face in the room was turned toward me. Every pair of eyes waited not for the truth, but for my explanation. My gaze remained fixed on the tablet resting on the table, my own voice still echoing inside my head."If Dam
Aria’s POVThe silence after Kade’s mother spoke didn’t break immediately. It settled instead, thick and suffocating, like the room itself had decided it was finished listening to me.My hands were still hovering over the table when the voice note began to play and at first, it sounded like static,
Aria’s POVThe air in the sitting room felt wrong the moment I stepped inside, it wasn’t just the silence, it was the kind of silence that carried weight, like everyone inside had already agreed on a version of events I hadn’t even been told yet. My hand was still on the door handle when I noticed
The door opened before I realized I had stopped moving entirely.Thorne stepped aside without speaking. “She’s here,” he said quietly.I looked up to see Aria standing in the doorway.Real. Present. Unaware of what had already been decided in the room she was about to step into and for the first tim
Damon’s POVThe first sign that something was wrong was the silence that settled over the Packhouse, the kind that felt deliberate rather than natural, as though the building itself was holding its breath. Thorne entered my office without his usual confidence, placing a sealed file on my desk but re
Aria's POVThe waiting was worse than the test itself and I had imagined the bloodline spell would somehow give me answers immediately, that the healers would wave glowing hands over a crystal and tell me whether the child growing inside me belonged to Damon or Kade.Instead, I had spent nearly an h
Damon’s POVThe silence after her words didn’t feel like silence, it felt like an impact.“I reject the bond.” Aria’s voice still echoed through the corridor, bouncing off stone walls and sinking into places I couldn’t immediately reach. For a moment, nobody moved… not the guards, not the Elders be
Aria’s POVThe summons came before I even finished my morning tea.A guard appeared at my door without knocking properly, his expression tight in the way that meant this wasn’t optional, and he didn’t waste time explaining anything beyond a single sentence.“The Elders want you in the Hall.” That al
Aria's POVThe rain fell so heavily that it blurred the battlefield into streaks of gray and black.For several seconds after Lex's words, I couldn't hear anything except the pounding of my own heartbeat.‘You still killed me.’The sentence echoed inside my skull over and over until it drowned out t
“I am proud of you.”The words hit harder than they should have.Damon noticed immediately because his expression shifted into concern. “Aria?”“Nobody’s ever said that to me before,” I admitted quietly.Pain flickered briefly across his face before he lowered his head and kissed me slowly, carefull







