Aria’s POV

The courtyard was chaotic.

Not the loud, clumsy kind of chaos you get when a crowd panics. This was the kind that had teeth and claws, the kind that didn’t care if you screamed because it was going to swallow the sound whole anyway.

Smoke coiled upward from somewhere near the training pits, curling past the windows like dark fingers trying to pry their way inside. Flames snapped and spat, light dancing over stone walls now smeared with streaks of shadow. Wolves darted through the haze, their growls tearing at the air.

And in the middle of it, Kael was gone.

One second he’d been there, his wolf...