Kaia’s POV
The sirens weren’t the worst part.
It was the silence inside the squad car.
The kind of silence that wraps around you like a noose.
Tight. Suffocating.
I sat motionless, my hands cuffed, my wrists raw, my mind a vortex of rage and disbelief.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
Not to me.
Walter sat beside me, stiff and red-faced, saying nothing. He hadn’t said a word since they shoved us into the car.
Good.
Because if he had opened his mouth, I might have screamed.
He was supposed to protect us. He had promised that we were too big to fail. Too powerful to fall.
But now we were here—being driven like common criminals down the same streets where just weeks ago, people whispered our names with reverence.
Now they whispered them with venom.
I shifted slightly, my shoulder
