Ayla's POVI didn't go.I'd stood at the window with my fingers on the latch, Tala's warning still echoing in my chest, and as I looked at Zander's patient, knowing expression, something in me just couldn't go through with it. It didn't feel right.I couldn't trust my judgement in that moment, so I closed the window, locked it, and went back to bed."You chose yourself," Tala said quietly.It didn't make the ceiling any easier to stare at. It didn't stop the bond from aching, the images from cycling, or the tight, cracked feeling in my chest from loosening even slightly. But I stayed. I kept myself inside the four walls I knew, and I waited for morning.Morning came too fast, too bright, and relentlessly normal compared to how I felt inside.I got dressed slowly, like I was carrying something fragile and one wrong movement would drop it. Jeans, hoodie, boots — the same things I always wore. I wore the armor of being easy to overlook. It occurred to me somewhere between lacing my boots
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