The hum of the laboratory's ventilation system sounded like a funeral dirge, a mechanical drone that filled the silence left by the dying echoes of Malakor's revelation. In the wake of the psychic projection, the air felt thin, stripped of its oxygen by the sheer weight of the betrayal.
Gwen stood paralyzed in the center of the room, her gaze fixed on the empty space where the image of a younger, colder Lucien had just stood, claiming her like a piece of high-grade artillery.
Lucien reached out, his hand hovering in the air between them, trembling. He looked as if he had been hollowed out from the inside, his Alpha pride replaced by a raw, desperate vulnerability. "Gwen, listen to me. That boy in the memory... he was a man drowning in the blood of his pack. I was watching my people die every single day. I didn't know you then. You weren't a person yet. You were just a concept, a flickering hope for our survival."
