ELYRA.
The sharp ringing of the alarm dragged me out of sleep like someone pulling a blanket off my body in the middle of winter.
I groaned and buried my face deeper into the pillow, hoping the sound would magically stop on its own. It didn’t. The shrill noise kept echoing through the quiet room, stabbing into my head again and again.
“Ugh… shut up already,” I muttered.
With a loud hiss of annoyance, I reached out blindly toward the nightstand and smacked the alarm until the sound finally died. Silence returned to the room, and for a moment I just lay there, breathing slowly, trying to reclaim the peaceful warmth of sleep I had just lost.
It didn’t come back.
Grumbling under my breath, I forced my eyes open and glanced toward the clock.
My brain took a second to process what I was s
