Elias POV

I hadn’t slept.

Not because I couldn’t, but because I refused to.

Sleep meant silence, and silence meant room for thoughts I didn’t want. Thoughts of where she was. Of who had her. Of what they might already be doing to her.

Mara wasn’t someone to play with.

And the fact that someone dared to, dared to test my patience using her, made something dark coil tight in my chest.

I sat in my office, files open in front of me, my name stamped neatly at the top of documents I couldn’t read. The words blurred together no matter how hard I tried to focus. Every thought circled...