Chapter 106
Kaeleen's POV
The silence in my office was a heavy, suffocating blanket. It was the kind of quiet that only exists when the person who should be filling it is absent. I stared at the financial projections on my screen, the numbers blurring into meaningless symbols. My company was thriving, my pack was secure, and by all accounts, I should have been on top of the world. But my world had narrowed to a single, agonizing point of focus: Astrid.
Something was wrong.
It wasn't one big thing, but a hundred small, unsettling details. The faint, persistent shadows under her eyes that even her brightest smiles couldn't hide. The way she would jump at the slightest sound when she thought I wasn't looking. The way she clung to me at night, her grip almost desperate, as if she were afraid of drifting away in the darkness.
And she never told me what was wrong. She was pulling away from me, retreating into a place in her own mind where I couldn't follow. And it was killing me.
