Ava’s POV
The silence between Damon and me felt like a thick fog that neither of us dared to breathe through. Even as we drove deeper into the pine-laced wilderness, a part of me kept glancing at the mirror—not to check if we were being followed, but to look at myself. To understand who I was becoming. A Scentless Omega. A secretary. A hunter’s blood flowing in my veins. And a traitor to everything I used to believe.
“How much farther?” I asked, my voice brittle like frost clinging to the edges of something dying.
Damon didn’t answer right away. His eyes were fixed ahead, the glow of the dashboard casting shadows on his hardened jawline. “Almost there.”
“Where?” I pressed.
He glanced at me briefly. “A safehouse. Remote. Hidden. No one but me knows about it.”
“That includes the surviv
