All Chapters of The Man I Buried : Chapter 71 - Chapter 77

Lyra POV I don’t move right away.Even after they disappear into the trees, even after their scent begins to thin and scatter just enough to make pursuit less certain, I stay where I am, my body still, my senses stretched wide.Because something about it doesn’t feel finished.It should.They came. They revealed themselves. They left.That should be the end of it.But it isn’t.The forest hasn’t settled.The air still feels wrong.I inhale slowly, searching for what’s left behind, for anything I might have missed in the moment when everything shifted too quickly to fully process.Their scent lingers faintly, broken now, harder to follow, but not gone.Two.Still just two.No—I pause.My head tilts slightly, my focus sharpening as I draw in another breath.There’s something else.Fainter than the second scent had been before.So faint I almost dismiss it.Almost.But instinct doesn’t let me.My chest tightens slightly.That wasn’t there before.I’m sure of it.I shift my stance, turn

Lyra POV It hits me all at once, without warning or mercy. One moment I am standing there trying to make sense of what I just felt, trying to hold onto logic and everything I know to be true, and the next moment I cannot breathe. My chest tightens so suddenly it feels like something invisible has wrapped around my lungs and squeezed. The air comes in shallow, uneven pulls that do not feel like enough, like no matter how much I inhale it will never reach where it needs to.My heart is racing too fast, too loud, pounding so hard it drowns out everything else. I press my hand against my chest as if that might steady it, as if I can force my body to slow down, but it does nothing. If anything, it makes me more aware of how out of control I am.Kael’s name crashes through my mind again, sharper this time, dragging everything else with it. I smelled him. I know I did. That was not memory, and it was not grief twisting reality into something it is not. It felt real. It was real.But it cann

Rowan POV Something is wrong.I don’t need her to say it. I don’t need evidence laid out in clear words or visible signs that anyone else could point to. I feel it the moment she steps back into the village, the moment her presence settles into the space we share through the bond.It’s subtle.But it’s there.And once I notice it, I can’t ignore it.Lyra has always been controlled, especially after everything she went through. Even when she was breaking, even when grief hollowed her out from the inside, there was a kind of stillness to her that felt… consistent. Predictable in its weight.This isn’t that.This feels sharper.Unsteady in a way that doesn’t match anything I’ve seen from her before.When she tells me she went for a walk, I let her say it. I don’t interrupt. I don’t call it out immediately for what it is.A partial truth.Because she’s not lying.But she’s not telling me everything either.I can see it in the way her eyes hold mine just a fraction too long, like she’s me