Jake's POV
The grove outside the venue was dark and cold.
Wind through the leaves. The particular smell of rain coming.
Ava stood a few feet from me and didn't speak immediately. She looked at the ground — not avoidance, more like someone deciding what to say rather than whether to say it.
"Speak," I said.
She looked up. "You should ask Adrienne directly what she said to me."
I frowned. "Adrienne doesn't know you."
Something's off, Marco said.
"Alpha Jake." Ava's eyes met mine without flinching. "Do you really trust her that much?"
The familiarity hit me again. Not visual — the angles were wrong, the proportions different. But something underneath it. The stillness. The way she held a silence without filling it.
There's something, Marco said.
What? He couldn't say it. I couldn't
