LILA’S POV
I didn’t sleep.
Even when the camp quieted, when the wounded were tended, when the last patrols rotated out and the forest settled into a tense, unnatural silence… I couldn’t close my eyes.
Every time I tried, I saw him.
That calm expression.
That certainty.
That power.
Ryker hadn’t attacked us.
He had measured us.
And worse…
He had been satisfied.
I stood at the edge of the clearing again, the same place I had stood after the fight, my arms wrapped tightly around myself as if I could hold everything inside before it broke apart.
The wind brushed against my skin, cool and soft but it didn’t soothe me.
Nothing did.
Because something had changed.
Not just outside.
Inside me.
“You’re still here.”
Davian’s voice came from behind me, quiet but steady.
I didn’t turn
