Lucas’s POV
The silence inside my chest didn’t last. It never does. Not when the truth is clawing through bone, not when the scent of your own blood cries out from a room you never knew existed, and certainly not when the beast inside you wakes up starving—for vengeance, for retribution, for the stolen breath of a child you’ve never held but would burn kingdoms to reclaim.
Torren was louder than he had ever been.
He wasn’t pacing anymore. He wasn’t whispering. He was roaring inside me, a hurricane of need and fury that eclipsed even my own thoughts, and for once, I didn’t want to quiet him. I wanted to listen. Because this time, he was right.
"They took what was ours."
The words echoed again and again, his voice scraping against the walls of my mind like claws on stone, and every time they repeated, the vision grew clearer: Damon, hidden in some place I’d never seen, crying out for someone to find him, and us—too late, too blind, too fucking human to reach him in time.
I didn’t sleep
