Lucien Blackthorn did not sleep.
He lay rigid on the stone floor of the Alpha’s chamber, staring up at the fractured ceiling, listening to the slow, traitorous rhythm of his mortal heart.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Every beat reminded him of her.
Every breath felt like theft.
Nightfall was quiet too quiet. The war had ended, but the echoes of it lingered in the walls, in the bloodstained earth, in the hollow eyes of his pack. Victory had come at an unbearable cost.
Seraphine.
Gone.
Not dead.
Worse.
He could feel it some instinct deeper than thought. A severed bond, stretched thin across impossible distances. She still existed. Somewhere beyond his reach.
And it was destroying him.
Lucien pushed himself upright, muscles trembling with exhaustion. His wounds had closed, but the pain
