KIERAN’S POV
I didn’t remember the drive back to Nightfang.
There were fragments: red lights blurring past, the steering wheel biting into my palms, the guttural animal sound in my chest that wasn’t quite a growl and wasn’t quite a scream.
I remembered pulling into the pack territory on instinct alone, muscle memory carrying me where thought no longer could.
Pain had a texture.
It scraped raw. It burned deep. It howled through every nerve.
The bond was gone—yet its absence roared louder than its presence ever had.
Ashar was tearing at me from the inside, his mind a maelstrom of fury and loss so violent it eclipsed language.
The world felt wrong. Distorted. Like something essential had been ripped out, and the universe was bleeding through the wound.
‘She rejected us.’
The thought wasn’t formed in words. It was sensation—raw, feral, catastrophic.
