ARIA POV
I didn’t notice when my breathing changed and emotions started to flow in again.
Not at first.
It happened somewhere between the first she-wolf’s voice fading into the background and the silence stretching too long, too heavy, settling into the space like something alive, something watching, until I realized I wasn’t breathing the way I had been before—slow, detached, like I wasn’t really inside my own body—but sharper now, uneven, catching slightly at the end of each inhale like something inside me had started resisting again instead of just… existing.
Feeling again, and I hated it.
Because feeling meant thinking.
And thinking meant understanding exactly where I was, exactly what this place was, exactly what was waiting on the other side of that door Lena had pointed at ear
