The woods had never felt so quiet.
Not even in the dead of winter, not in the blackest hour before dawn. This silence wasn’t emptiness—it was awareness. The forest watched them now. It remembered.
Quinn stood barefoot in the middle of the glade, arms wrapped around Rowan’s sleeping form. The child’s breathing was soft and even, his cheek tucked against Quinn’s shoulder like he’d never nearly torn the fabric of reality apart.
Jace moved silently beside them, close but not touching. Not yet. The night’s battle left its mark on all of them—soul-deep bruises that no healer’s hand could mend.
Ash clung to their boots.
The shattered circle of the Mate Hunters had burned away, replaced by a ring of scorched earth and blood-soaked stone. In the center, the grass had begun to regrow—silver-gre
