POV: Clara 

For a moment there had been peace. 

No storm. No fire. No voices chanting through my bones. Just rain pattering on the roof, the rise and fall of his breathing against my ear, heat and fatigue weighing us both down into the earth.

The Covenant was silent. 

Its absence hung heavy in the air like a breath held. The woods outside were still, unnaturally so. The trees themselves seemed afraid to shift, to wake something ancient that had at last settled into ...