For one suspended second, nobody moved.
Not the crowd.
Not Liam.
Not Selene.
Not even me.
The only sound in the yard was the soft ticking of hot engines cooling beneath the council SUVs and the wind stirring through the trees like it had arrived just in time to hear something break.
The Elder who had spoken—silver-haired, severe, wrapped in formal black from throat to ankle—stood with the calm of a woman who had spent years ruining people’s comfort in the name of order and had come to think of it as service.
Her eyes stayed on me.
Not on Liam.
Not on Kade.
Me.
That was the part that made my skin go cold.
Because it meant this had moved beyond gossip.
Beyond pack whispers.
Beyond even Liam’s rejection.
I was no longer the girl at the center of a scandal.
I was the scandal.
