GABRIEL
The first thing I feel is pain.
Not the kind that lives in muscle or bone—but the kind that slices straight through the chest and lodges itself behind the heart. Sharp. Sudden. Terrifyingly familiar.
Emma.
I stop mid-step in the courtyard, breath stalling as if the world has slammed into my ribs. Snow drifts lazily around me, muffling the sounds of the estate, but inside my skull everything is screaming.
Fear.
Not unease. Not confusion.
Fear—pure and raw, pulsing through the bond like a flare shot into the night sky.
My hands curl into fists at my sides.
“No,” I whisper.
I had sworn I wouldn’t chase her. I had promised myself—promised her—that if she walked away, I would let her go. That I would not use the bond. That I would not become the thing she was afraid I already
