[Emma's POV]
The night had settled like a wet blanket over the mansion—thick, heavy, full of the kind of silence that makes your bones ache. I should have stayed in my room, curled under blankets until morning, pretending the world I’d been ripped into didn’t exist. But the echo of Jaxon’s hand on my jaw, his voice promising violence if anyone touched me again, hummed in my veins like electricity. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. About how close his lips had been, about the fist he’d driven into the dresser, about the warning that the pack’s old law would turn me into a target.
So when I heard a soft knock at the door—three light, cautious taps—I almost laughed at myself for the surge of relief that flooded me. It felt like an invitation to normalcy, to the brotherhood I wanted and fea
