Dane’s POV
The council room smelled of parchment and smoke. I’d been sitting there for almost an hour, trying to listen to Beta Kael’s report, but every time his voice droned through the room, my mind drifted somewhere else, up the stairs, through the hall, and straight into the room where she lay.
Donna.
Even now, her presence lingered at the back of my mind, faint but impossible to ignore.
The mate bond pulsed like a distant heartbeat, a soft tug beneath my skin that kept me tethered to her even when I didn’t want to be.
“Alpha,” Kael said again, his tone sharpening, pulling me back. “You’re not listening.”
I blinked, straightening in my chair. “Repeat that.”
He exhaled, a mixture of patience and irritation. “I said the patrols found no trace of the rogues near the southern bord
