One hour. That's what the wards gave her.
Serena booked it through the corridors, stopping outside of Dex's quarters.
She knocked once.
No answer.
Fifty-eight minutes left.
"Dex?"
She pushed the door open.
He was sitting in front of the fire with a glass of whiskey, shirtless, the amber liquid catching the light. It was nine in the morning. The bottle on the table beside him was missing a third of its contents, and for an Alpha's metabolism, that was an achievement that required commitment.
He hadn't slept. She could see it in the bruised hollows under his eyes, in the way his shoulders sat too low, in the stillness of a man who had stopped moving because he didn't trust himself to start again.
His wounds from the fortress were half-healed. The gash along his ribs still held a faint black edge where dark magic had cauterized wrong. Bruises layered over bruises, old ones yellowing beneath fresh ones that hadn't decided on a color yet.
