Killian’s POV
The forest didn’t look the same anymore.
It was dying.
Every tree I passed seemed hollow , their trunks cracked, their bark turning to dust when the wind touched them. The air was cold, too still, too wrong. Even the ground seemed to sigh beneath my boots.
I’d been walking since dusk, though I couldn’t tell how long that had been. The moon hung low, a pale wound in the sky, bleeding silver light through the clouds.
Lilith’s voice still echoed in my head.
“She’ll destroy what’s left of you, Killian. Let her go.”
But she didn’t understand. None of them did.
I couldn’t let Zylia go. Not when the pack was collapsing, not when everything in me still pulled toward her. That bond , no matter how faint , still burned under my skin, flickering like the last ember in a dying fi
