Kael's POV
Ayla didn't move when I said her name.
Not even when the bond pulled between us—alive and restless and demanding in a way that made it difficult to stand still. She just watched us, perfectly composed, her silver eyes holding mine without flinching. Without dropping.
That used to be different. She used to look away.
I'd spent years assuming her silence meant weakness—that it made her easy to overlook, easy to push around. Something that would bend if pressed hard enough.
I'd been wrong about that for a long time.
There was nothing weak about the way she looked at me now. She held her ground in the snow, with the boundary line at her back and three future Alphas standing between her and freedom, showing that nothing about her was small. She'd learned something in thirteen y
