|Serena's POV|
The morning sunlight kisses my skin through the half-drawn curtains, warm and golden, like the universe itself is whispering you're safe now. I stretch under the sheets, still tangled in the faint scent of Gryphon—citrusy spice, something dark and grounding underneath, like the ocean at night—and I don't fight the smile that pulls at the corners of my lips. My chest feels lighter than it has in weeks, my limbs boneless and unburdened. It's not that everything's magically fixed. I know better than that. But something shifted last night. Something tectonic.
He held me.
He didn't say much—not in volume—but he said everything in the way his arms didn't loosen, the way his lips brushed my forehead like I was breakable and indestructible all at once, the way his hand threaded i
