Dominic:
The night had teeth. The streetlights spilled over the wet pavement in sharp, fractured beams. Every step I took echoed too loudly in my own head. She had left, and the air felt suddenly hollow, like the world had exhaled and forgotten to fill the spaces between things.
I wanted to chase her. Every part of me—the wolf coiled beneath my skin, the ache in my chest—screamed to run, to follow, to shield her from whatever awaited. But I didn’t. I stayed. I let her go.
It was the hardest thing I’d ever done.
Her scent lingered, ghostly and sharp, trailing down the corridor of the building where she had vanished.
Smoke and wind and something wild, something untamed that made my wolf stir in recognition. She was out there—alone—and I would not touch her. Not yet.
I followed at a di
