Rafe POV
The room smelled of lavender and ash, like someone had tried to polish a ruin. I held my ground by the bed, every muscle coiled. The photograph still smoldered at the edge of my vision - Luna in a gown, perfect and naive - and I hated how human that made her, how much I wanted to protect that impossible, fragile thing.
Aldric stood in the doorway like a ghost who’d found a place he’d been allowed to haunt. He didn’t look like a traitor; he looked like a man who had spent his life convincing himself he was not one and who finally belived it. Ash smeared his jaw, sleeves singed, eyes hollow with a hunger that felt like religion.
My wolf told me to kill him. The feeling rang in my bones, a raw, black thing that wanted blood for scent. But I wasn’t an animal with a single action. I
