Rory's POV
I turned, my body still heavy only to see her.
My mother. Celeste stood at the doorway, her frame blocking out the faint light spilling from the corridor. She didn’t move at first. She only stood there, her eyes fixed on me in a silence that felt suffocating. Her gaze swept over me, cold and sharp, as though she were searching for something, some truth written on my skin that I didn’t even know was there.
The longer she stared, the more my stomach knotted.
Then, without a word, she stepped in. Her fingers shot out, clamping hard around my wrist. I barely had time to inhale before she was dragging me forward.
“Mom—” I jerked back, instinctively resisting. “Let go!”
But her grip was firm. Iron. It shocked me. I had never known her hands to be this strong. I tugged, twisted,
