Kieran P.O.V
The clearing was still shaking. Dust swirled in faint silver spirals where the creature had dissolved, and I stood frozen in the center of it, chest heaving, trying to pull air back into my lungs. My forearm wouldn’t stop glowing—no, thrumming. Each frantic heartbeat slammed into the crescent burned beneath my skin, and each pulse came back with the same echo, the same impossible imprint: her fear.
Not imagined. Not dreamed.
Real.
Felt.
The sensation was so strong it almost drove me to my knees. My senses were still split between here and… her. The tremble in her arms as she held the baby tight, the violent jolt of terror that wasn’t mine — all of it still echoed through me like a second heartbeat, foreign and insistent.
Lucian straightened first, wiping blood—none of it
