ARIA POV
Waking up felt wrong.
Not like surfacing from sleep. Not like opening your eyes after a nightmare and realizing it isn’t real.
This felt like clawing my way up through mud.
My body was heavy. Dead weight heavy. Every limb felt detached, like it had been stitched back onto me and no one had checked whether the seams would hold. My back throbbed in deep, dull pulses, each one slow and deliberate, like my body was reminding me that something terrible had happened there. And it had.
The silver arrows flashed in my mind and istinctively I reached for my wolf.
Kara.
With that internal stretch, that familiar brush of awareness that had always been there since my first shift. That constant hum beneath my ribs. That second soul.
Nothing answered.
No warmth.
No snarky comments .
