Cassian POV
I left Seraphina in Hazel's capable hands. I walked away before I could do something irrevocable that my wolf wanted so bad.
Like pull her close. Like breathing in the scent of her hair, jasmine and moonlight and something uniquely her. Like confessing everything I was feeling before I understood it myself.
The palace corridors stretched before me, familiar and foreign all at once. I'd walked these halls for three centuries, but tonight they felt different. Smaller. As if the walls were closing in, pressing me toward a future I wasn't ready to face.
You should have told her, Ezra muttered, his presence a restless heat in my mind. You should have claimed her. Marked her. Made her ours before-
Before what? I cut him off, my mental voice sharp. Before she's ready? Before she
