Orion's POV
Inside me, Ares stirred. Not the low, restless stirring I was used to—this was something louder, something with teeth in it. A sound that wasn't quite a growl and wasn't quite grief but lived somewhere between the two.
"She is not coming back," he said. "You have broken her. That is what a broken mate looks like, Orion—not tears, not shouting. That is it. That empty face she wore when she handed you those papers. That was it."
"You don't know that," I said.
"I do." He was brutal about it, the way he always was when he had run out of patience for my certainty. "I have always known. You are the one who chose not to see it."
I sat in the quiet of Mia's room and tried to locate something to hold onto.
"I didn't know the marrow belonged to Mia," I said, out loud, because the a
