Lyra asked the question that mattered most to her. “How long until it leaves our system?”
Tarek didn’t need time to think. “If no more is given, most wolves begin to return within a week. Maybe less in someone strong. It starts in pieces. Dreams. Instinct. Flickers.”
Lyra’s hand went unconsciously to her chest.
Iris was still there. Faint, distant, stirring at the edges like someone waking in the next room. That door inside her, the one that had been sealed shut for so long, had cracked open when Kade looked at her in the arena and named her.
Mate. That singular declaration from the wolf she could never truly give up had changed everything.
Tarek frowned as if that thought had just reached him. “It doesn’t make sense,” he said. “You felt the mate bond. You shouldn’t have been able to
