[Elijah]
The moment my gaze fell on her, every bit of air in my lungs seemed to vanish, leaving me hollow. It felt as though the world around me had frozen, and the breath in my body was sucked away in an instant, leaving only a suffocating weight on my chest.
Hazel was lying on the floor beside the bed, her body sprawled out, too weak to move, her face pale against the carpet. Her hair was a tangled mess around her, as though she’d fallen there without any strength left to fight it. For a moment, fear gripped me so tightly I could barely think. My heart raced, a thousand thoughts colliding in my mind.
It's all your fault, Elijah. First Miranda and now Hazel.
Then, just barely, I saw her chest rise and fall—so faint it felt like a dream, a fragile rhythm that seemed too weak to be rea
