Blake POV
The battlefield does not go quiet all at once.
It exhales.
Fire fades to embers. Wings retreat into distance. The wards hum lower, their frantic warning song settling into a steady, watchful pulse. Smoke drifts across cracked stone, carrying the sharp scent of scorched magic and blood.
And in the center of it all—
She stands.
Elle is still glowing when I reach her, golden light fading slowly from her fur like sunset bleeding into night. Her sides rise and fall hard with breath, her body marked by battle—burned, scraped, bloodied—but her spine is straight, her head lifted.
She is not bowed.
She is not afraid.
And gods help me, she is magnificent.
Blaze roars inside me, not with fury, not with hunger, but with something so fierce and reverent it steals the air from my lun
