POV: Ares Voss

It’s been a long-ass time since I laughed like that.

A really long time.

The kind of laugh that bubbles up from somewhere deep in your gut, the kind that feels like it scrapes years of shit off your soul as it rises. The kind you don’t have to fake. The kind you don’t apologize for.

And for once, nobody was bleeding. Nobody was yelling. Nobody was shoving past each other like we were racing toward ruin.

We were just... here.

Sitting around a breakfast table.

Being loud. Being real.

Being family.

God, I’d missed this.

It didn’t hit me until Siena flushed that perfect shade of...