DAEMON'S POV
Zina had not spoken loudly when the words left her—just a breath, nothing more—but Daemon heard it like a blade scraping over bone.
She had called her mother. Albeit a desperate plea, barely above a whisper, but he was sure of what he heard.
His body stilled. Completely.
No growl. No order. No crackle of power. Just stillness—the kind that comes before ones world ends.
The people behind him froze on instinct, not because of command but because they had felt and heard the same thing he did: something impossible had just been undone. Something no power in the world accounted for.
He didn't blink. Didn't breathe nor move. He was afraid he couldn't even if he wanted to. His gaze stayed pinned to her corpse—except she was no longer a corpse.
She was breathing.
Alive.
The audience before him had not yet processed it—shock travels slow through a crowd of that magnitude—but Daemon did not share their delay. He was not a king at that moment nor an alpha.
