Elira's POV
The word landed in the forest like something that couldn't be taken back.
I stood there with the cold night air moving through the trees around me and Lucien's face giving away almost nothing and my mind trying to process what he had just said against everything else I was already carrying.
Kael was gone.
I didn't know what to feel about that. I genuinely didn't. The man who had rejected me, humiliated me, dragged me back from Nightfall and locked me in a room had just been taken and the first thing I felt was not relief.
It wasn't relief at all,It was fear.
Not for myself. Something that lived in the part of my chest where the mating bond sat and pulsed and refused to behave like something I could simply decide not to feel.
I pressed my hand flat against my sternum.
"
