Lyra POV
The mansion was cloaked in an uneasy silence, the kind that settles after a storm but promises another on the horizon. The lanterns in the hallways had dimmed, their golden glow reduced to faint flickers, casting long, wavering shadows across the polished oak floors as Jaxon and I retreated to our quarters. Darius had been escorted to the guest wing, his heavy footsteps fading into the night, but his presence lingered like a specter, a weight pressing against my chest.
My she-wolf was restless, her whine a constant hum beneath my skin, stirred by the memory of Darius’s gray eyes—hauntingly like Jaxon’s but colder, hungrier—fixed on me with a possessive intensity that both terrified and tugged at my soul. I clung to Jaxon’s hand, my fingers laced tightly with his, his calloused
