**ADAM**
The moment the bond goes silent is the moment restraint stops being an option, because silence is not distance and it is not rest, it is severance forced by interference, and I feel it like a blade sliding between my ribs and twisting until breath becomes a conscious act rather than instinct. One second Sasha is there, burning and fighting and anchoring me through sheer will, and the next there is nothing but an echo so abrupt it nearly drops me to my knees.
She is gone.
Not dead. Not lost. Taken.
The forest explodes into motion before the thought fully settles, my people surging forward as the barrier collapses under brute force and fury, shouts tearing through the night as steel meets flesh and the carefully staged restraint disintegrates into open violence. Kian’s enforcers
