**ELEN’A POV**
The house feels too quiet after Damian leaves.
Not peaceful. Not calm. Just hollow, like something important has been pulled out and the space has not decided how to exist without it yet. The guards are still here. The lights are still on. The perimeter hums with the same low vigilance it always has. Monitors glow softly. Radios murmur in low, professional tones. But Damian’s absence is loud in a way nothing else can fill. It presses against my ears and my chest until everything feels slightly off balance.
I pace.
I try not to, at first. I tell myself to sit. To breathe. To do what he asked me to do, which was stay here and let him work. I lower myself onto the couch and force my hands into my lap. I count my breaths. In. Out. Again.
I make it exactly three minutes befo
