SERAPHINA’S POV
The dream didn’t begin with me.
That was the first thing that was off about it—not the content, not the intensity, but the angle.
I wasn’t inside myself the way I usually was when my mind wandered in sleep.
I was drifting. Watching. Slipping in and out of others’ skin like frequencies crossing on a crowded wavelength.
The first was Lucian.
Not the sharp, composed Alpha the world knew, nor the shrewd, half-smiling man who so often stood at my side with quiet calculations behind his eyes.
This Lucian stood alone at the edge of something vast and empty, shoulders bowed, gaze fixed on the ground as if he were afraid that looking up might break him.
There was no dialogue. No explanation.
Just the weight of regret and something…foul clinging to him li
