His stomach dropped.
Something had taken her.
Someone had taken her.
A cold, lethal fury surged through him, but beneath it—beneath the rage—was something far more dangerous.
Fear. Real fear.
The kind he had not felt since he was a child, since the day he watched his father fall in battle. The kind that ripped throughhim now, raw and unrestrained, because Mara was not just his partner in the Games.
She was his heart.
Vaelor’s breath came faster. His hands shook. He hated the loss of control—but he couldn’t stop it. He was a clan leader, trained from birth to remain steady in chaos, to protect those under his care, to never let fear cloud his judgment.
But this wasn’t a clan member.
This wasn’t a warrior.
This wasn’t a duty.
This was Mara.
And the thought of her alone, hurt, afraid—It shattered him.
He forced himself to breathe, to focus, to listen. The ice forest was vast, full of shifting echoes and deceptive sounds. But he strained anyway, desperate for anything—her voice, her heartbeat, her scent.
Nothing.
His chest tightened painfully.
He had failed her.
He had let her walk out alone.
He had let himself rest when he should have been protecting her.
He would never forgive himself if something happened to her.
He moved into the forest, following her tracks, each step fueled by a rising panic he could barely contain. The trees loomed around him, crystalline and sharp, their branches whispering in the wind like mocking voices.
“Mara!” he called again, louder this time.
Still nothing.
His heart hammered against his ribs. His vision blurred at the edges. He felt unsteady, weakened from the previous challenge, but he pushed through it. He would crawl across theice if he had to. He would tear the forest apart with his bare hands.
He would find her.
He had to find her.
Because the truth he had been avoiding—hiding even from himself—was now undeniable.
He loved her.
He loved her with a depth that terrified him.
He loved her with a fierceness that made the world sharper, brighter, more dangerous.
