Layla's POV
The summons arrived in the middle of the night.
One of the security team knocked quietly on my door and waited until I answered before handing it over, like he'd been instructed to make sure it reached me directly. No explanation. No warning. Just the seal of the council pressed into the paper and my name written beneath it in precise, official script.
Gabriel was awake when it happened. I could feel him in the villa, alert and contained, already moving through whatever came next in his head. I didn't go to him, and he didn't come to me. Things between us were still tight from earlier, from my refusal to pretend I hadn't seen what he'd done with Kian and how easily violence had been his first answer. But this wasn't about that anymore, and we both knew it.
I'd ass
