(Dominic’s POV)
The silence told me more than words ever could.
Ava was gone.
Not absent. Not training. Not “resting” as the younger scouts claimed when I asked them with a growl in my throat.
She’d left, and no one dared say it aloud.
I stood on the balcony of the war room, arms folded across my chest, staring at the treeline where night swallowed sound. The wind carried the scent of pine and ash. Faint. Recent.
She had gone east.
My hands tightened around the railing.
That direction led to Ravenwood borderlands—or worse.
I wasn’t a fool. I knew her well enough to recognize her patterns. Ava was restless when she had a mission, obsessive when she had a reason to run. Whatever she discovered during that last mission had pushed her over the edge. I should’ve seen it in her eyes whe
