Chapter 39. I Can’t Touch You

Kade didn't break through the final treeline; he tore through it, the scent of burning metal and ozone overriding every primal defense his Alpha senses possessed. The world outside the clearing was silent, but the world within was a cacophony of magical dissonance: a residual high-pitched whine that only his wolf could hear, the sick-sweet smell of scorched earth, and the palpable, stomach-turning sensation of physics being violently defied.

His focus narrowed to the center of the devastation. He saw the shallow, irregular crater—a chaotic basin where the grass had been replaced by fused, oily black glass and fine, glittering silver dust. Trees near the perimeter were not merely burned; they looked imploded, their internal structure having failed under an impossible pressure wave.

But none of that mattered. Nothing mattered except the silent, fragile lump at the core.

Aria lay in the exact epicenter of the destruction, returned to her shifted form, but a form