Chapter 4: Chapter 4
Selene’s voice was a shard of ice in the grove’s sacred warmth. Her smile was a wound.
Zade moved instantly, a blur of protective fury, placing his body between her and Aria. Ronan’s arms tightened around the small, confused figure in his grasp. Jude stepped sideways, his mind calculating angles, distances, the two enforcers like looming statues in the dark.
“What are you talking about?” Zade growled, the sound more animal than human.
Ronan, sensing a deeper, more immediate threat, reacted on instinct. He grabbed Aria and picked her up, holding her to him, her face buried against his neck. She felt alarmingly light, the fabric of Zade’s hoodie swallowing her.
Selene’s glacial eyes sparkled with malicious delight. “Oh? Her wolf won’t disappear… it’ll take control. A puppy. Completely. Fully. Her human mind buried. A pet.” She savored the words, letting them hang in the ozone-charged air. “And you’re too late to stop it.”
The horror was a physical blow. It wasn’t death. It was erasure. The Aria they knew, the Alpha with the violet fire in her eyes, would be gone, trapped behind the instincts of a juvenile wolf. A permanent pup.
“What the—” Ronan began, but his words choked off.
A small, high-pitched whimper came from the bundle of clothes he was holding. It was not a human sound. It was the soft, distressed cry of a very young animal. The bundle shifted, squirming with a weakness that had nothing to do with a human child’s fussing.
“Have fun with your pet, boys!” Selene yelled, her laughter tinkling like breaking glass. She took a deliberate step backward, melting into the shadow between the ancient oaks. Her enforcers followed, their forms dissolving into the forest’s ink. They weren’t staying to fight. They’d come to witness their victory.
Zade lunged, a roar tearing from his throat, but Jude threw himself in the way. “The spring! Zade, now!”
The logic cut through the red haze. Killing Selene wouldn’t save Aria. The spring might.
Zade spun, his chest heaving. Ronan was already stumbling toward the glowing pool, his face pale with terror. He knelt at the stone basin, trying to hold Aria still. She was whimpering continuously now, a piteous, grating sound that clawed at the bond, flooding it with pure, undiluted fear and animal need.
“Hold her, hold her,” Zade barked, fumbling for the vial his father had given him. His hands were shaking. The crystal stopper came loose with a pop.
Jude was there, the journal open. “Three drops at moonrise. It’s moonrise. Do it!”
Zade’s hand steadied. He willed it to. He extended his arm over the placid, glowing water and tipped the vial. One. Two. Three drops of phosphorescent blue fell, hitting the surface with a sound like sizzling metal.
The effect was instantaneous. The spring’s soft glow erupted into a blinding azure radiance. The water began to churn, bubbles rising as if from a boiling pot, though no heat emanated from it. A low hum vibrated through the stone beneath their knees, up through their bones.
“Now what?” Ronan cried, tears cutting tracks through the dirt on his face. Aria had gone still in his arms, her whimpers silenced, her body rigid.
“The water,” Jude said, reading frantically. “She has to drink. She has to be immersed. It doesn’t specify!”
Zade didn’t wait for clarification. He took Aria from Ronan. Her eyes were closed, her features so young, so peaceful it was heartbreaking. “Forgive me,” he whispered, and stepped into the stone basin.
The water was shockingly cold, a cold that burned. It soaked through his boots, his pants, searing his skin with a pain that felt cleansing. He waded to the center, where the water rose to his thighs, and gently lowered Aria’s small form into the glowing pool.
The light clung to her. It seeped into the oversized hoodie, outlining her diminutive shape in fierce blue. For a long, suspended moment, nothing happened. The only sounds were the churning water and their ragged breaths.
Then Aria’s back arched. A gasp, sharp and human, ripped from her lips. Her eyes flew open—violet, but swirling with that same alien blue light. She thrashed, not like a child, but like someone fighting a riptide from within.
“Hold her down!” Jude shouted, though Zade already was, his arms a cage of desperate love around her, keeping her head above the churning surface.
Aria began to scream. It was a raw, shredded sound, full of agony and a terrifying duality. Within it, Zade could hear the echo of her wolf’s panicked howl. The bond became a storm of conflicting sensations: the searing, icy fire of the water, the brutal unraveling of the curse, and beneath it all, a frantic, splintered consciousness—Aria—clawing its way back from the abyss.
Her body convulsed in his arms. He felt a shift, not in size, but in density. The delicate bones in his grip seemed to firm, to lengthen just slightly. The youthful roundness of her cheek began to sharpen, etching back toward the young woman he knew.
But the scream didn’t stop. It was tearing her apart.
“Get it out of her!” Ronan sobbed from the edge of the pool, his hands clenched in his hair.
As if in response, Aria’s mouth opened wide, and a plume of silvery, vaporous mist shot out, coiling like a phantom snake in the air before dissipating into the moonlight. The smell was acrid, chemical—the scent of Selene’s poison.
Aria went limp, the scream cutting off. The violent churning of the spring subsided, the light dimming back to its original gentle glow. The unnatural warmth of the grove remained.
Trembling, Zade gathered her soaking body against him and staggered out of the pool. He collapsed to the moss, Ronan and Jude instantly beside him, pulling blankets from their packs.
They wrapped her, rubbing warmth into her limbs. Her breathing was deep and even, the rhythm of true sleep, not the dizzying drift of before. Zade brushed the wet hair from her face.
She looked about sixteen again. The devastating regression had been arrested, rolled back a precious fraction. The childlike softness was gone, replaced by the familiar, stronger lines of her adolescence. Her hand, when he took it, fit his again, no longer a doll’s.
But she didn’t wake.
“Is she… is she in there?” Ronan whispered, his finger tracing her newly-defined brow.
As if in answer, a flicker behind her eyelids. A faint, tired pulse in the bond. Not the chaotic static of a child’s mind, nor the feral simplicity of a pup. It was a weary, coherent presence. A familiar, stubborn flame, guttering but burning.
“She’s fighting,” Zade said, his voice hoarse. “She’s in there.”
Jude let out a long, shuddering breath, his analytical mind finally succumbing to the crash of adrenaline. He looked at the now-placid spring, then into the dark woods where Selene had vanished. “She said we were too late. The wolf would take control.” He looked at Aria’s peaceful face. “The spring stopped the regression. But did it… did it heal the separation? Or just freeze it?”
The question hung in the air, unanswerable. The immediate threat was paused, not passed.
Aria stirred, a small murmur escaping her lips. Her eyes didn’t open, but her fingers curled weakly around Zade’s.
“Zade,” she breathed, the name whole, adult, and exhausted.
It was the best sound he had ever heard. He bent his head, pressing his forehead to hers, breathing in the scent of her—rain-washed forest and a lingering trace of that ozone-clean spring, the sickly-sweet “newness” utterly gone.
“I’m here,” he said. “We’re all here.”
They made a camp there, in the sanctity of the grove, building a small fire from deadfall outside the sacred circle. No other creature dared approach. Aria slept the profound, healing sleep of the deeply traumatized, her pack a living wall around her.
As the moon began its descent, Jude quietly repacked their supplies. His eyes were hard. “Your father wanted proof,” he said to Zade, his voice low. “We have our testimony. And we have the journal entry for the catalyst. That ties it to Frostveil alchemy.”
Zade watched the firelight play on Aria’s face. The rage was still there, a banked coal in his gut, but it was colder now, more focused. Selene hadn’t just attacked his mate. She had tried to unmake her. She had tried to strip Aria’s mind and leave a pet in her place.
“Proof isn’t enough,” Zade said, the words final. “The law can have what’s left of her.”
Dawn was a pale suggestion in the sky when Aria’s eyes opened. They were clear, violet, and utterly aware. She looked at Zade, then at Ronan and Jude sleeping fitfully nearby. Memory and horror flooded into her expression, followed by a wave of crushing weakness.
“It felt like… drowning in sand,” she whispered, her voice raspy. “I could hear you, but I was so small. And then the cold… it burned the sand away.”
Zade helped her sip some water. “The wolf?” he asked gently, afraid of the answer.
Aria closed her eyes, looking inward. A long minute passed. When she opened them, they were shining with tears of relief and residual terror. “She’s… here. Frightened. Angry. But here. We’re… tangled. But together.” She reached up, touching his cheek. Her hand no longer trembled. “You found me.”
“You led us,” he corrected, catching her hand. “Even when you were gone, you led us here.”
She managed a ghost of her old, wry smile. “Always have to be right, don’t you?”
The familiar tease was a balm. He kissed her palm.
As the first true rays of sun filtered through the oak canopy, illuminating the grove in gold and green, they knew what came next. They couldn’t stay in this sanctuary forever. The world—the Academy, their enemies, the consequences—waited.
Aria sat up, leaning heavily on Zade. She looked at her hands, turning them over, reacquainting herself with their strength. The journey back to herself was just beginning. The bond hummed, not with the dissonance of fracture, but with the steady, determined thrum of a pack united, scarred but unbroken.
They had a cure to finish, and a debt to collect.
The grove’s protective silence felt fragile now, a temporary bubble. They were exposed. Jude scanned the tree line, his shoulders tense. "We can't stay. She knows this place. She might come back with more than just taunts."
Aria pushed herself up further, testing her limbs. A full-body ache greeted her, deep in her bones, as if she’d been reassembled molecule by molecule. She looked at her hands, then at Zade, a slow realization dawning in her violet eyes. They weren't the hands of a child, or even a sixteen-year-old. They were hers.
“I’M 18 AGAIN.” SHE WHISPERS.
The words were a soft exhalation of pure, stunned relief.
“YEAH, YOU ARE.” ZADE SAYS KISSING HER TEMPLE.
He let his lips linger against her skin, breathing her in—rain, wolf, Aria. The knot of terror in his chest finally began to loosen. Ronan let out a wet, choked laugh, scrubbing a hand over his face. Jude’s analytical facade cracked into a grin so wide it looked like it hurt.
"It worked," Jude said, the statement simple and profound. "The spring and the catalyst. It actually reversed the chemical regression."
"Feels like I got run over by a truck, but yeah," Aria said, her voice gaining strength. She flexed her fingers. "A very magical, glowy truck." She tried to stand, her legs buckling immediately. Zade caught her, holding her upright against his side. Her body was the right size, the right age, but it was weak, like a muscle long unused.
"Whoa, easy," Ronan said, his hand on her back. "Your body just went through temporal whiplash. You need fuel."
They shared protein bars and water, the mundane act of eating in the mystical clearing feeling both absurd and necessary. The sunlight grew stronger, burning off the last of the grove’s enchanted mist. With the light came the harsh return of reality.
"So what's the move?" Ronan asked, crumpling a wrapper. "We just walk back into the Academy like nothing happened?"
"No," Zade and Aria said in unison. They glanced at each other, a spark of their old dynamic returning.
"We walk back," Aria clarified, "and we end her." The ferocity in her tired voice was absolute. It was the Alpha heir speaking.
"My father said he'd handle it with pack law," Zade said, but his tone was flat. The memory of Selene’s laugh, her gloating over Aria becoming a mindless pet, curdled any thought of bureaucratic justice.
"Your father also gave us forbidden magic and sent us into the woods," Jude pointed out, standing and brushing moss from his pants. "I think his version of ‘handling it’ has flexibility. We need proof she can’t talk her way out of. The empty vial, the journal notes… it's circumstantial. She'll say we fabricated it."
Aria’s eyes narrowed. "Then we need a confession."
"How do we get that?" Ronan asked. "Ask nicely?"
A slow, cold smile touched Aria’s lips. It wasn't a kind expression. It was the look of a predator cornered, now ready to turn. "We use what she wants. She wants Zade. She wants to see me broken." She looked at Zade, her gaze sharpening with strategy. "We give her a show."
Zade’s green eyes darkened. "Absolutely not. We're not using you as bait."
"I'm not bait," Aria snapped, a flicker of her old fire. "I'm the trap. And you're the spring. Jude, the library's west annex, the alchemy ledger. If she brewed that poison on campus, she needed supplies. There’ll be a record."
Jude nodded, his mind already racing ahead. "The ledger is kept by old Professor Hale. He’s half-blind and logs everything in triplicate after his three o'clock tea. It's accessible."
"And I," Ronan said, catching on, "can have a quiet, comforting chat with her best friend, Lydia. She’s a terrible gossip and hates that Selene treats her like a handmaid." He mimed wiping a tear. "I'll be so worried about poor, regressed Aria, I might just slip and mention how devastated Zade is, how he's questioning everything..."
Aria looked at Zade. "You'll be with me. Publicly. We'll be a picture of despair. My recovery will be 'fragile.' My wolf, 'unstable.' We sell the story that the spring only partially worked, that I'm… diminished."
The idea of pretending she was less than whole made Zade’s skin crawl. But he saw the ruthless logic in it. Selene’s arrogance was her weakness. She’d need to see her victory, to gloat up close. She wouldn't be able to resist.
"It's dangerous," he said, his voice a low rumble.
"Everything is," Aria replied, finally finding the strength to stand on her own. She faced him, her gaze level. "She tried to delete me, Zade. She doesn't get to walk away from that because of pack politics or her family name." The bond between them thrummed, not with fear, but with a unified, cold purpose.
They packed up, leaving the grove as they found it. The walk back was slow, Aria leaning on Zade not entirely for show. The forest felt different in the daylight—ordinary, almost dismissive of the magic that had transpired under its boughs.
By the time the Academy’s spires came into view, their plan was set. The roles were clear. The performance was about to begin.
They slipped in through a service entrance, the stale smell of the basement corridors a stark contrast to the living forest air. The first test came immediately. Turning a corner, they almost collided with Mark, the Alpha from the gym, and two of his lackeys.
Mark’s eyes swept over them, taking in their disheveled state, the mud, the way Zade held Aria. A nasty smirk played on his lips. "Look what crawled out of the woods. Heard you were all on a little camping trip. Reyes, you look like hell. Worse than usual."
Aria didn't meet his eyes. She let her shoulders slump, pressing closer to Zade’s side. A faint, distressed whine, perfectly pitched, escaped her throat.
Zade felt the sound like a physical blow, but he let his own face harden into a mask of grim protectiveness. "Move, Mark."
"Touchy," Mark said, but the smirk faded into something more curious. He was seeing what they wanted him to see: a broken Alpha heir and her desperate mate. He stepped aside, his gaze lingering on Aria with a predatory interest that made Zade’s wolf snarl internally.
They moved past, the encounter a silent victory. The rumor mill would be churning within the hour.
Back in their dorm block, the illusion continued. Jude split off immediately, heading for the library archives. Ronan melted into the common room, his face a masterpiece of concerned sympathy. Zade guided Aria to her room, his arm a firm band around her.
Once the door shut, the act fell away for a moment. Aria sagged against it, exhaustion hitting her anew. "I hate this," she muttered, closing her eyes.
"I know," Zade said, moving to her. He didn't hug her, not yet. They were both too wired, too aware of the walls having ears. "We just have to sell it for a little while. Until she takes the hook."
Aria opened her eyes. The violet in them was steel. "She will. Her type always does." She reached out, her hand finding his. The contact was electric, a silent promise. "Let's go be tragic."
They emerged ten minutes later, Aria’s hair deliberately left tangled, her eyes downcast. Zade’s expression was a carefully crafted blend of fury and helplessness. They walked to the dining hall, a parade of calculated vulnerability.
Every stare was a data point. Every whisper, fuel. They sat at their usual table, a conspicuous island of silence. Aria picked at her food, her movements listless. Zade just stared at his plate, his jaw clenched.
She was there within twenty minutes.
Selene glided into the hall, a vision of icy composure. Her eyes found them instantly. Aria felt the gaze like a spider’s crawl on her skin but didn't look up. Selene collected a cup of tea, her path a slow, deliberate arc that brought her directly past their table.
"Zade," she said, her voice a melody of false sympathy. "What a terrible ordeal. The woods can be so… unpredictable." Her eyes flicked to Aria, drinking in the performance of defeat. "And Aria. You look… tired. Are you sure you should be out of bed?"
Aria made herself flinch, just slightly, at the sound of Selene’s voice. She peeked up, then quickly looked back down at her plate, a masterpiece of cowed confusion.
Zade’s response was a low growl, perfectly unhinged. "She’s fine. Leave us alone."
Selene’s smile was a quick, victorious flash. She’d seen enough. "Of course. My apologies." She moved away, the scent of her frost-and-lilac perfume lingering like a poison.
As she left, Aria finally lifted her gaze. All trace of confusion was gone, burned away by a clean, lethal clarity. She met Zade’s eyes across the table.
The hook was set. Now they just had to reel her in.
Now they just had to reel her in.
The performance was exhausting. For two days, Aria moved through the Academy halls like a ghost of her former self, her steps hesitant, her famous violet gaze perpetually downcast or darting in feigned anxiety. Zade was her constant shadow, his touch always guiding, his expression a rigid mask of controlled anguish. They whispered in corners, fell into sudden, tense silences, and once, in the middle of the crowded quad, Aria had fully buried her face in Zade’s chest with a shudder that wasn’t entirely an act—the memory of the grove’s cold fire could still ambush her.
“This sucks,” she mumbled into his shirt that evening, back in the temporary safety of his room. She was sprawled on his bed, the facade dropped. “I feel like I’m wearing a costume made of wet paper.”
“You’re doing great,” Ronan said from the floor, where he was sketching idly in a notebook. “Lydia is practically broadcasting the ‘tragic, unstable Aria’ bulletin on pack frequency. She told me Selene has been ‘so concerned, but wisely keeping her distance.’”
Jude looked up from his phone, a hard glint in his gray eyes. “Ledger check is complete. Three weeks ago, Selene signed out moonbane root, silver nitrate, and chronus moss. Professor Hale’s notation says ‘for advanced stabilization trials.’ It’s a lie. That’s the exact cocktail for a temporal unraveling agent.”
“Proof,” Zade said, the word flat.
“Circumstantial,” Jude countered. “She’ll claim she was working on a different project. We need her to admit it was for Aria. We need her to get specific.”
The opportunity came the next afternoon, engineered by Ronan’s gossip. They were in the abandoned library, their true sanctuary, when the heavy door groaned open. Selene stood framed in the dusty light, alone. She wore a look of sympathetic condescension.
“I heard you’ve been hiding in here,” she said, her voice echoing softly between the canyon-like bookshelves. “It must be hard, coming to terms with being… less than you were.”
Aria, sitting on the floor with her back against a shelf, drew her knees up. She didn’t speak. Zade shifted subtly, placing himself partially in front of her, his body a wall of tension.
“You need to leave, Selene.”
“Or what?” she asked, taking a few graceful steps into the room. The scent of frost and lilacs invaded the space of old paper and dust. “You’ll attack me? Again? How very predictable. I’m just here to see the damage for myself.” Her eyes, glacial and hungry, fixed on Aria. “Does it hurt? Feeling your wolf slipping away, becoming something simple? A basic, frightened thing?”
Aria flinched, a genuine reaction to the venom in her words. She felt her own wolf stir in response, not cowed but furious, a jet-black storm raging against the confines of the act. The bond pulsed with the shared strain.
“Get out,” Zade snarled, taking a threatening step forward.
“You always were a brute,” Selene sighed, as if disappointed. “All force, no subtlety. You think your little act is convincing? The slumped shoulders, the wide eyes?” She took another step, now well within the room. “But I know what my concoction does. I know the mind goes before the body fully commits. The regression is neurological. So tell me, Aria…” She leaned forward slightly, her voice dropping to a vicious, intimate pitch. “Can you even feel your pack bond anymore? Or is it just static? A distant buzz, like a radio left on in another room?”
It was the perfect, cruel question. It cut to the heart of their worst fear in the grove. And it was the bait they needed.
Aria let the mask shatter. Not into the broken human girl Selene expected, but into raw, unfiltered panic—the panic of her wolf. She didn’t stand up. She scrambled back, a low, canine whine ripping from her human throat, her eyes widening with primal, animal fear.
Then, with a sound of tearing fabric and shifting bone that was horrifically loud in the quiet library, she shifted.
It wasn’t the powerful, lithe transformation of an Alpha heir. It was a frantic, uncontrolled cascade. Her form melted and reformed in a disjointed rush. Where the majestic, jet-black wolf should have stood, there was instead a smaller, younger version. Its fur was patchy in places, its legs slightly uncoordinated. It was Aria’s wolf, but visibly juvenile, perhaps only a year or two past its first shift.
The young wolf whimpered, its ears flattened against its skull. It didn’t snarl or stand its ground. It cowered, its body low to the dusty floor, and scrambled behind Zade’s legs, pressing its trembling flank against his calves for shelter.
The sight was a thousand times more believable than any human performance. A broken girl could be faking. A cowering wolf, hiding behind its mate, could not. This was visceral, biological truth.
Selene’s composure broke for a single, triumphant second. Her glacial eyes lit up with unholy delight. “Oh,” she breathed, the word saturated with victory. “It’s even more perfect than I hoped. It really is just a puppy. How utterly pathetic.”
Zade dropped to one knee, placing a steadying hand on the young wolf’s scruff. He didn’t look at Selene. His entire focus was on the trembling animal, selling the devastating moment.
“See?” Selene continued, her voice rising with unchecked glee. “The great Midnight Sun heir, reduced to this. My formula was flawless. The temporal reversion is absolute. Her wolf’s mind is all that’s left, and it’s a child’s.” She took a final, gloating step closer. “You should put her on a leash, Zade. For her own safety.”
From behind the shelf to Selene’s left, the soft, unmistakable click of a phone recording being stopped echoed in the silence.
Selene froze. The triumph on her face solidified, then cracked into confusion, and finally, dawning horror.
Jude stepped out from the shadows between the bookshelves, holding up his phone. Ronan emerged from the other side, his gentle face now cold, blocking the path to the door.
The young wolf behind Zade stopped trembling. It lifted its head. The cowering posture dissolved into something poised, alert. The juvenile features seemed to sharpen, the eyes shifting from scared amber to a familiar, piercing violet-gold. The shift back to human form was faster, smoother. Aria knelt on the floor, naked, gasping, but her gaze was a lance aimed directly at Selene.
“Formula,” Aria said, the word rough from her recently reshaped throat. “Temporal reversion. Absolute.” She pushed herself up, accepting the jacket Zade instantly shrugged off and wrapped around her. “You just described your crime, Selene. On record.”
Selene’s face went bone-white. “You… you tricked me.”
“You tortured me,” Aria corrected, her voice gaining strength with every word. “You tried to unmake me. For what? For a boy who never wanted you?” She took a step forward, and despite the jacket, despite her nakedness underneath, she was every inch the Alpha. “You’re finished.”
Selene’s shock curdled into rage. A low growl started in her chest, her own wolf rising to the surface. The air crackled with impending violence.
Zade moved in front of Aria again, but this time it wasn't part of an act. His green eyes bled to full, burning amber. “Don’t,” he warned, the single word vibrating with the promise of annihilation.
The library door burst open. Not with a groan, but with a decisive thud that shook the shelves.
Alpha Xavier Conners filled the doorway, two Crimson Moon enforcers flanking him. His gaze swept the scene—his son poised to fight, Aria wrapped in Zade’s jacket, Jude with the phone, Ronan guarding the exit, and Selene, caught in the center, her guilt etched in the panic on her face.
“Selene Frostveil,” Xavier said, his voice devoid of all warmth, carrying the formal, heavy weight of law. “By the authority of the Allied Packs Council, you are remanded for the use of forbidden alchemy and the intentional, malicious assault on a bonded pack member. The evidence will be presented.”
He glanced at Jude, who gave a single, sharp nod.
Selene looked from Xavier’s implacable face to Zade’s savage one, to Aria’s victorious, furious glare. Her own enforcers were nowhere to be found—likely already detained by Xavier’s people. The clever, vicious architecture of her plan had collapsed inward, trapping only her.
She said nothing. The fight drained from her, leaving a hollow, defeated shell.
As the enforcers moved forward to take her arms, Aria finally let out the breath she’d been holding. The tension bled from her shoulders, replaced by a wave of dizzying relief. Zade’s arm came around her, solid and real.
It was over.
Xavier’s eyes met Zade’s, then dropped to Aria. A faint, almost imperceptible nod of respect passed between them. Without another word, he turned, leading the enforcers and their prisoner away. The library door closed, leaving the four of them alone in the sudden, profound quiet.
The silence stretched, broken only by the distant sound of retreating footsteps.
Ronan was the first to speak. “So,” he said, slumping against a bookshelf. “Who’s starving? I could literally eat a whole deer. Like, hooves and everything.”
A choked laugh burst from Aria. It turned into another, and then she was leaning into Zade, laughter and shaky sobs mingling together. The sound was pure, unfiltered release.
Jude pocketed his phone, a slow, real smile spreading across his face. “I’ll settle for pizza. But we’re getting extra toppings. This was a four-topping ordeal, minimum.”
Zade rested his chin on top of Aria’s head, holding her as the tremors of aftermath worked their way through her. The bond was wide open, flooding with their collective relief, their exhaustion, their hard-won safety. It was no longer a static buzz or a painful fracture, but a clear, strong channel, humming with the solid, undeniable truth of them.
“Pizza,” Zade agreed, his voice rough with emotion. “And then we sleep for a week.”
Aria looked up at him, her violet eyes clear, tired, and completely her own. “Sounds perfect,” she whispered.
Outside, the afternoon sun slanted through the high, dusty windows, illuminating the motes of dust they’d disturbed. They were just particles, swirling in the light, finally settling.