Eugene's POV
The door clicked shut behind me, the sound final and hollow in the quiet hallway. I stood outside Flora’s room for a long moment, my hand still resting on the brass handle.
Something had shifted. It wasn't just the exhaustion from the stomach bug she claimed to have, or the shock of Victoria showing up on our doorstep. It was something deeper, colder. When I had pulled her against me, she hadn't melted into my chest the way she usually did. Her body had stayed stiff, a subtle wall erected between us that hadn't been there this morning. The way she had whispered that we needed to stop—it felt less like a temporary precaution and more like she was stepping back from the edge of a cliff.
A heavy, grounding knot of worry tightened in my gut. I hated not knowing what was going
