( Aria's POV )
The forest didn’t sleep
Even when the cabin fell into silence, the woods beyond its walls pulsed with quiet life, the rustle of leaves, the crackle of branches under unseen paws, the chorus of nocturnal creatures that reminded me this was not the safety of human towns but the wild, claimed and contested. I’d grown used to those sounds, but tonight they scraped at my nerves like claws on stone.
Kael hadn’t moved from his seat across the room. He looked carved out of shadow and firelight, one broad shoulder leaned against the chair as though he could sit like that for hours, watching. Waiting.
I hated how much his presence anchored me. Hated how, beneath the irritation, my wolf settled under his gaze like a pup under its Alpha.
“You should rest,” he said finally, his voi
