CONNOR POV
Watching my mate slide Nathan’s throat open did something to me I hadn’t expected.
Not horror.
Not shock.
Clarity.
The moment her claws cut cleanly, efficiently, without hesitation or spectacle, something inside my chest locked into place with a certainty so absolute it felt like bone settling after a break.
Whatever she would become.
Whatever she would choose to do.
I would only fall harder.
Nathan’s black blood spilled across the stone floor, thick and wrong, steaming faintly as it pooled. Grace didn’t step back from it. She didn’t recoil. She stood there, light burning through her like a second sun, brighter and brighter until the walls of the cell reflected it, until the shadows had nowhere left to hide.
Then she released.
Not in an explosion.
Not violently.
She
