[Emma's POV]
The fragile calm that had followed Jaxon’s vow shattered over the next few days. The master bedroom became a gilded cage, its atmosphere thick with a tension that had nothing to do with the lingering conflict between the brothers and everything to do with the woman at its center.
Emma was changing, and the transformation was anything but subtle. It was in the small, terrifying things. When Jaxon brought her a tray of food and their fingers brushed, a jolt of static passed between them—and from her fingertips, tendrils of living shadow, no thicker than thread, leaked out, dissipating into the air like smoke. When she woke from a nightmare, gasping Cain’s name, the heavy velvet curtains at the window would ripple as if in a strong wind, though the air in the room was still.
T
