Chapter 105

••• Damien’s POV ••• Victoria had always been fire. But now she was ice. And worse than the flames I could handle—I could burn with her, scorch the world beside her. But this cold? This silence? It was killing me. She avoided me. Perfectly. Deliberately. Like a ghost that refused to haunt me but still left the scent of regret in every room she touched. How many nights had she not come home? I'd lost count. No, I didn't want to count. It hurt too fucking much to think of her not even wanting to be close to me. And every night, I paced the suite like a caged beast, each tick of the clock slicing into my nerves. I knew our contract had started this. But it was the lies I wrapped around it—around her—that dug the knife deeper. I told myself I could wait for her wolf to wake, that I could earn her love on my own before the truth of the bond hit her like a storm. But the storm had come. And I had stood in the eye of it, silent, stupid, and scared. Scared of her rejection. But facing it now,