Aurora’s P.O.V

The wind had started to pick up again as I made my way back to the packhouse, rustling the trees like they were whispering secrets I wasn’t ready to hear. My boots thudded softly against the path, weighed down by the silence in my chest. My heart was knotted, tangled between guilt and the ache of knowing something precious was slipping through my fingers.

 The bond I’d been trying to forge with my half-siblings—fragile, new, and already bruised—was ...