Elara’s POV
Sleep refused to come.
No matter how many times I closed my eyes, my mind kept returning to the same images.
Golden eyes watching me across the training grounds.
Growls that made warriors twice my size fall silent.
Wolves moving through the forest like shadows that belonged to the night itself.
And the mark.
My fingers drifted to my collarbone again, pressing lightly against the warm skin there. The sensation answered instantly, a faint pulse beneath my touch, like something alive beneath the surface.
It wasn’t painful.
But it was impossible to ignore.
Being inside Kael’s fortress made that awareness sharper somehow. As if the stone walls themselves carried echoes of something ancient that my body recognized before my mind could understand it.
I sat up slow
