KRISTEN'S POV

The night refused to rest.

Even the air inside my office felt restless, thick with the kind of silence that doesn’t soothe—it suffocates. I sat behind my desk, half a glass of whiskey sweating in my hand, watching the fire bleed low in the hearth. My thoughts wouldn’t shut up. Damon’s face. Eliana’s power. The way everything had spun out of control in a single heartbeat.

I should have felt some kind of satisfaction. Damon humiliated, his proposal rejected, his ...