Aria’s POV

The nights have started to feel longer again.

Even when Damon is beside me, even when his arm is the perfect weight across my waist, there’s a hollowness that eats at the edges of the dark. It’s like someone cut a piece out of the night and left the rest hanging ... raw, exposed. I try to tell myself it’s the aftershocks of everything we’ve been through: the Red Moon, the fighting, the way the pack breathes differently now. But the truth is simpler and worse. Something is ...