FAZER LOGINHannah’s POVI was shaking so badly that Lena had to hold my hands still just to fix my bracelet.“Breathe,” she said, grinning at me. “You’ve defeated mighty witches. You can walk down a path in a pretty dress.”“It’s not just a path,” I whispered. “It’s the whole pack. And everyone from the other packs. And Aaron.”“Especially Aaron.” She wiggled her eyebrows, and I laughed so hard I nearly ruined my hair.Lena looked beautiful in soft gold, her eyes bright and clear. It still made my heart squeeze, how far we had come. She had walked into my life as a secret and stayed as family, and no one in that room would ever take that from me.There was a knock, and Priya poked her head in, already dabbing her eyes. “Oh, don’t you look… oh no. I promised myself I wouldn’t cry before the ceremony.”“Too late,” said Mirabel, stepping in behind her with a tiny smile. She touched my cheek the way a mother might. “Your parents would be so
Hannah’s POVI could finally climb the stairs without holding the rail.I did it on purpose just to prove I could. Fourteen steps, up and then down, with Priya watching from the landing with her arms folded and her mouth pressed flat.“Show off,” she said.“I’m recovering.”“You’re gloating.”“A little,” I admitted, and she laughed and went to put the kettle on.That was how most days went now for the past six weeks. Small, steady, ordinary things. My strength came back in drips, a little more each morning, until one day I noticed I no longer had to plan how to get out of bed. The color returned to my face. My hair grew glossy again. I could eat a whole meal and ask for more.And my powers came back too.I had been afraid of that. I had lain in bed through those first weeks and wondered, in the dark, if I would ever be able to reach it. Then it came back slowly, from holding a single flame in my palm to building a
Hannah’s POVI understood as soon as the world stopped swimming around me that was that I was very tired and that I was alive, which was a surprise.I lay propped against a mountain of pillows in a room full of afternoon light, with a blanket tucked to my chin and a cup of something warm that Priya held patiently to my lips. My arms felt made of wet sand. My throat felt like I had swallowed a handful of gravel. But when I turned my head, the whole room swung into sharp, ordinary focus, the white sheets, the window, the little bundle of dried lavender on the sill.And Aaron.He sat in the chair beside me and had not looked away once in the day since I woke. He had shaved. He looked thinner than I remembered, with shadows under his eyes like thumbprints, but there was a lightness in him that I had never seen, a kind of dazed, wondering brightness, as though he had been underwater a long time and had just come up.“You’r
Aaron’s POVIt happened again the next morning.I had not slept. I sat through the whole night with her hand in both of mine, and when the first gray light came through the window I felt it, faint as breath on glass. A flutter against my palm. Her index finger, moving.I did not say anything. I did not move. I had learned in one night what it cost to hope, and I was not willing to spend it all at once.By noon it had happened twice more.Priya had come, as she did every day, and I had told her. She had listened with her head tilted and her hands folded, and I watched her decide how to be kind. “Muscles can twitch, Aaron,” she had said gently. “It doesn’t always mean…”“I know.”“But I’ll stay,” she said, and pulled the second chair to the foot of the bed. “A little while.”So she stayed. We sat together in the quiet, the healer and the fool, and neither of us said what we were waiting for.Afternoon came. Priya read a
Aaron’s POVThree months, and the pack had almost gone back to normal.I went to the office most days now. That was the arrangement I had made with myself, and with Priya, who had stood in my doorway one gray morning with her arms folded and said that the pack could survive a lot of things but not an Alpha who had forgotten how to sign his own name. So I sat behind the desk for a few hours. I read reports. I approved supplies. I listened to council members tell me things were fine, and nodded, and understood perhaps half of it.Then I came back to this room.Everything in my life had begun to bend toward that door. I woke in the chair and went to sleep in the chair, and what I did in between was only a way of waiting.Nothing changed. That was the whole of it. Priya came every morning and every evening, with her tray and her quiet hands. She checked the pulse in Hannah’s throat. She lifted her eyelids and lo
Aaron’s POVLena and Declan came in the morning.I heard them in the hallway first, the slow uneven step of Declan walking on a bad side and Lena’s low voice telling him to stop pretending he didn’t need the wall. I did not rise. I had stopped rising for visitors on the third day.They stood together in the doorway, and neither said anything at first.Declan looked worse than I remembered, thin and gray, one arm pressed to his ribs. But his eyes went straight past me to the bed, and I watched his face change. He had never been a man for soft words. He took a long breath and let it out slowly.“She looks like she’s sleeping,” he said.“She isn’t,” I said. It came out harsher than I meant. “Not really.”“No.” Declan took one careful step into the room. “I know.” He looked down at her for a long moment. “You did well, kid,” he said, very low. “Wake up, and I’ll tell you properly.”Lena crossed to the bed and sat







