AYLA'S POV
Not with heat. Not with flame. With me.
Silver fire filled every inch of space, roaring without sound, devouring without mercy. I wasn't standing—I was floating, weightless in a storm I couldn't escape.
I couldn't see the stone. I couldn't see the Hollow.
I couldn't see Kael.
"Kael!" My scream vanished into the blaze, eaten by the very fire that tore out of me.
No answer.
The fire churned, endless, suffocating. It pressed into me, through me, as if I was both flame and fuel, the devourer and the devoured. My wolf howled in the inferno, her voice raw and savage.
We saved him. We saved him. We had to.
"Where is he?" My voice cracked, desperate. "Where is Kael? Show me!"
The fire bent around me, shapes flickering in the blaze. Not Kael. Faces. Dozens, hundreds. Wolves I'd healed. Wolves I'd failed. My mother's face. Cassia's sneer. The Hollow's grin.
And then—two golden eyes, burning faintly in the distance.
"Kael!"
