Damon’s POV
There are many kinds of silence.
The kind that comes after punishment, when the tears are dry and the body is too wrung out to protest.
The kind that fills a room when fear walks in, thick and choking.
And then there’s the kind Katrina gave me now—thin, sharp, brittle.
Her silence was not peace. It was a wall.
I’d known from the moment she woke this morning. She lay beside me, eyes open, body still. My arm was across her waist, heavy as iron, yet she might as well have been a thousand miles away.
She didn’t move when I kissed the back of her neck. Didn’t soften when I whispered her name. She just breathed, measured, deliberate, as though she were counting every second.
And I knew.
Something had changed.
I’ve lived too long in a world of liars and thieves not to recogn
