Adrian Thornwood's Point Of View.
The ballroom was unrecognizable.
The chandeliers that once sparkled like constellations now hung shattered, their crystals scattered across the marble floor like fallen stars. The scent of blood, smoke, and wolfsbane clung to the air, thick and suffocating. Every sound echoed, the faint crackle of fire, the distant groans of the wounded, the crunch of glass beneath my boots.
I stood there for a long moment, just staring. My pulse still thundered from the fight, the transformation, the chaos. My body ached, my back burned where one of those rabid wolves had sunk its teeth into me but the pain was not what anchored me to the spot.
It was the silence that followed. That eerie, unnatural silence that comes after the storm, when the screams have died down,
