Raven’s POV
Pain has a sound, I’ve learned. It isn’t a scream. It’s a kind of silence, total and complete, where even your own heartbeat goes quiet for half a second because your body is too busy deciding whether you’re about to die.
I saw Ronan’s blade coming down. I saw the rain caught in the curve of the steel, silver and slow, the way the worst moments of your life always seem to stretch themselves out longer than they have any right to.
And then Jax was there.
He hit Ronan from the side like a freight train, full wolf-shifted, all teeth and fury and three years of grief he’d never let himself name out loud. The blade went wide, scoring a line across my shoulder instead of my throat, and then Ronan was gone, rolling across the wrecked floor with Jax’s claws buried in his side, and
