Elara’s Pov
The night had fallen into an eerie quiet as I walked away from the clearing, Sergio’s words echoing in my mind. You need to stop thinking like a hunted wolf. His voice carried an edge that had unsettled me, but I had pushed the thought away, refusing to linger on it. I told myself it didn’t matter—not now, not when survival was the only thing that mattered.
But as I trudged through the forest, the weight of what I had just done, of the power I had unleashed, began to settle in. The flames had come easily, too easily, as if they had always been waiting, just beneath the surface, to burn their way free. And it had felt good. Too good.
The wind whispered through the trees, tugging at the edges of my cloak, and I couldn’t help but shiver. It wasn’t from the cold. There was somet
