Chapter 294. I Don’t Want You To Leave

Aerys’s POV

Please say something to her. Can’t you see the despair in her eyes the longer you stay silent?

My lycan’s voice echoed in my head, raw and frantic, clawing at the walls of my mind. Aire was rarely this desperate. He felt everything I felt—magnified, sharpened—but right now his distress eclipsed even mine. I could feel his panic, his fear of loss, his instinct screaming at me that I was about to make the biggest mistake of my life.

I stood there, frozen, staring at Elizabeth as though she were already slipping through my fingers.

I opened my mouth. Air rushed into my lungs, heavy and useless, but no words followed. Not a single one. My thoughts were a tangled mess—betrayal, shock, confusion, fear—all warring with the one undeniable truth that burned beneath it all: I loved her.