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Chapter 101. Return to Light

Author: Michael Moore
last update Last Updated: 2025-12-03 04:10:05

Aria’s POV

The world settles around me like warm water, thick and muted, as though the air itself is holding its breath. For a beat I drift in the blur — light smeared, iron sharp at the back of my tongue — and then everything sharpens into place.

Pine smoke. Damp wool. The faint hiss of wind through a cracked window.

Moonlight spills through the broken pane and rests on Damon’s face like a benediction.

He lies beside me, so still he could be carved from stone. His chest rises in the smallest increments, each breath tugging gently at the blanket I’ve tucked around him. Sleep softens him in ways I am never allowed to see: the unclenched jaw, the unguarded throat, the harsh lines of command eased into something startlingly human.

Damon Winchester — all iron control and clipped authority — looks almost fragile like this. A man stripped of armor. A man whose life flickered too close to being lost.

I remember what he is to me, what he has been.

The Alpha who ruled with law and certainty.

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