AIDEN’S POV
She was here.
Elena.
After months of silence, of aching distance and the weight of my own mistakes, she was standing in my pack house again. But she wasn’t mine. Not anymore. The thought tore through me, sharp and unrelenting, like claws digging into my chest. I couldn’t breathe.
From the second-floor balcony, I watched her. My hands gripped the railing so tightly I thought it might splinter under the pressure. She moved through the courtyard with a grace that was both achingly familiar and painfully distant.
Her dark hair caught the sunlight, and for a moment, I was back there—back to when she’d tilt her face to the sun, her laughter ringing out like music. But that was before. Before I shattered us.
Now, she carried herself differently. Her shoulders were st
