LOGINELENA'S POV, The door swung open and the noise hit me like a wall before I could recollect my thoughts. The events unfolding in the main hall weren't the clean, controlled chaos of a fight with established rules and regulations. It was the other kind, the wild kind of chaos that I was expecting t
ANDREW'S POV, “That seems premature. We're at a delicate point in the discussion—” “Which is exactly why we need a few minutes,” I said, holding his gaze. He looked away first, and I continued. “To discuss your proposals in private and speak our mind without you listening to us. Unless there's a r
ANDREW'S POV, I noticed the guard first. Not his presence, his absence. The post in the east corridor had been manned every time I had checked it since we arrived. It was a consistent, unremarkable detail that I had catalogued the way I catalogued everything in a room like this one—automatically,
ELENA'S POV, The report came in fragments, the way bad news always did. It wasn't clean, nor with the kind of clarity that made decisions easy. Just pieces, arriving one after another through channels that were supposed to be secure and reliable, and each piece landed worse than the one before it.
ELENA'S POV, “I don't need a recess,” I said and my voice came out flat. It wasn't cold, nor sharp, just flat, emptied of the performance of composure I had been maintaining since we walked through the door. Al'thor blinked once, and for the first time since this meeting began, I watched fear fli
ELENA'S POV, I don't know how long I stood there before Andrew noticed. He didn't say anything at first. He just shifted around, closing the distance between us by half a step, the way he always did when he sensed something was wrong but didn't yet know what shape it had taken. It was a small thin
After a few tries, she blinked her eyes before yawning wearily. She turned to look at me and offered me a little smile that made my heart flutter. That's what I wanted from life: to have someone who could make me feel special like that.“Did I fall asleep?” She questioned, looking around. And where
ELENA'S POV,Ryan left the room with his laptop, and it was hard to put Ollie back to sleep after what happened.She was worried about me and kept checking on me whenever I stopped reading. It was a new story, because I continued with the previous one. I kissed her on the forehead and assured her th
ELENA'S POV, Ryan arranged for the funeral in just two days, and I didn't know how to thank him for it. It was around 10 am in the morning when I was standing in the middle of a cemetery, so quiet, I could hear my breath stuck in my chest. I was the one who wanted to give Molly a proper funeral,
RYAN'S POV, I usually didn't linger around while Elena put Ollie to bed, but for some reason, I decided to stay that day. Like always, Elena was reading to Ollie before sleep and I could see that she had my daughter wrapped around the story. It was her narration—overly animated voices and loud dia







