Lean's POV
The forest breathed like a sleeping beast.
But I knew that, somewhere within its shadows, something had awakened.
The trace of Selene, and the trail of her wolf.
Kael and I ran side by side, our bodies still in wolf form, though every stride was a torture of patience. My instincts screamed to veer off course, to search in every direction at once. But that would mean losing her.
And we couldn’t afford that luxury.
The last flicker of her presence had reached us just before dawn, a torn echo through our bond. After that... only emptiness.
But I knew that emptiness.
It was the prelude to something worse.
“Do you feel it?” Kael growled through the mind link.
“Suffocating. Like she’s fallen inside herself,” I replied, my mind sharp, focused. “But she left a thread. Thin, bu
