[Ava's POV]
The air in the Den had become a solid thing, a gel of dread and unspent psychic potential that pressed against the skin and muffled sound. Each breath Ava took felt recycled through the lungs of the entire pack, heavy with their collective anxiety.
She could feel the minute fluctuations in pressure as Rhett’s simmering fury spiked, as Jaxon’s icy focus wavered, as Lucien’s brittle bravado threatened to shatter.
It was a psychic cacophony she could no longer tune out; she was the instrument upon which it was played.
Lucien, the most attuned to the intangible, finally broke under the strain—not toward anger, but toward a reckless pantomime of normalcy. The performance was for himself as much as for anyone. He needed to prove the walls weren’t already their coffin.
“We’re s
