The first scream did not reach his ears.
It reached his bones.
Alessandro's hand stilled over the council table as something sharp and immediate tore through the center of his chest like a blade driven without mercy. Not pain— not precisely— but something older, something that knew where to strike to unmake restraint before thought could intervene.
His breath caught.
Uff—
A tremor followed it.
Then another.
The bond did not whisper.
It howled.
Across distance.
Across sedation.
Across steel and forest and fear—
Her.
Every instinct in him rose at once, colliding against the brittle structure of control he had spent decades constructing with something dangerously close to desperation.
"What the hell—"
The words did not finish.
Because the windows shattered before anyone could speak them.
