Lucien’s POV
The cold woke me before the light did.
My hand instinctively reached for her, finding Elena’s form curled into me, her breath steady against my chest. She had come back to me sometime after dawn, slipping beneath the sheets like moonlight returning to the earth.
But something in her felt different now.
Not in the way she held me—she always did that in her sleep, like I was the anchor that kept her from drifting too far. It was the energy pulsing just beneath her skin. A quiet storm. She didn’t just feel like my Luna anymore.
She felt… awakened.
I rested my palm over the curve of her back, letting my thumb draw idle patterns across the silk of her nightgown. I could scent the faint tinge of Elder Darius’s herbs on her skin, the kind he used only in rites involving memory
