POV: Kael
The silence after Aria stormed away was suffocating.
Thorne stood beside me, stunned into stillness. Around us, the training field had gone quiet. Warriors who were sparring only minutes ago now looked on in uneasy silence, their gazes shifting from the path Aria had taken to me, unsure of what would come next.
I didn’t move. I couldn’t.
Her voice—normally a steady current of quiet strength—had cracked under the weight of betrayal. That final look in her eyes, the heartbreak I never meant to cause, had seared itself into my memory. I’d faced death before. I’d survived ambushes, battles with rogues, betrayals within the pack. But none of that prepared me for the sheer devastation in her expression.
“She’s right, you know,” Thorne muttered, his voice low but unflinching. “Abou
