The first thing I noticed was the quiet. Too quiet. The kind of silence that didn’t welcome you, it warned you. My pulse spiked before my brain even processed it, and every nerve in my body screamed that something had shifted irreversibly. Adrian stood beside me, his presence a shield I could feel without needing to see.
“I feel it too,” he muttered, eyes scanning every shadow, every corner, every inch of the room as if danger could materialize from thin air. The tone in his voice wasn’t fear; it was calculation, barely restrained. And yet, I sensed the tension coiled beneath it, ready to snap.
I swallowed hard, trying to steady my breath. Thoughts raced faster than I could follow, each one sharper, darker than the last. Fear, pride, anger, suspicion, they collided inside me, forming a t
