Caroline’s POV
The afternoon dragged on at a painful pace, and a thick, suffocating silence settled over the walls of the living room. I kept my promise. I stayed on the couch, wrapped in the blanket, but every nerve in my body was tuned to the outside world. Rowan remained nearby, sometimes moving around on the porch, sometimes appearing behind the windowpanes as he circled the house, and even when I could not see him, I felt his presence. It was like a dark cloud blotting out the sun.
The throbbing in my arm gradually turned into an unbearable itch. I knew what Myra had said, and I had seen the wounds last night. I had learned that deep bites take weeks to heal, they fester and ache. Mine, however, felt as if it were knitting itself together from the inside. Every time I tried to think
