Chapter 31

Angela:

~~~

For a long time, I’ve been floating, drifting somewhere between darkness and memory.

There was only quiet, a quiet that felt too heavy, too deep to belong to the living. There was no pain, no sense of where I was.

But somewhere in that quiet, a single sound trembled: a voice I couldn’t quite place, rough but warm.

Cassian?

‘It had to be him.’

The thought stirs faintly in my drifting mind like the ripple of wind over water, and I try to move toward it, but the weight pressing on my chest keeps me pinned in a world of half-light.

Until… a warmth wraps around my fingers.

The world seems to pulse with it.

“Happy birthday.” My heart aches at the sound. He sounded tired and raw, and beneath that exhaustion, something gentler… fear.

Then comes a ghost kiss, pressed to the back of my hand, as a thumb brushes over my knuckles.

But a spark from him makes my finger twitch.

A wolf’s spark.

It races up my arm, dances over my skin, spreads through my veins, and fills my che