Elara's Pov
My breath whooshed out of me as strong hands wrapped around my neck and lifted me clean off the ground like I weighed less than a bad grade. My arms flailed and Myra hissed, but before I could even yelp, a familiar voice growled low in my ear, “You’re too weak. What exactly are you?”
I didn’t need to look to know who it was. Damien. The universe’s personal punching glove in wolf form. Of course it was him. My celebration died an ugly death inside my chest. “L-let go!” I wheezed, kicking at the air like a furious rabbit. “We finished! We made it out!”
“You didn’t finish,” he said calmly, still holding me like a rag doll. “They dragged you out of that maze like some corpse on string. You didn’t survive, you were carried.”
His grip wasn’t choking me, not exactly. Just tight en
