Elara focused her heightened senses on Mara, not just on her actions, but on the hidden currents of her mind. She sensed a deep-seated despair, a feeling of being used and abandoned. While Mara was a formidable opponent, driven by rage, Elara began to realize she was still, at her core, a broken wolf, easily manipulated by colder, more calculating minds. Vipera, Elara knew, was the true puppet master behind Mara now, twisting her pain into destructive fury.
Elara managed to penetrate Mara's fractured mental defenses, glimpsing fragments of Mara's past. A history of abandonment, a profound sense of injustice, and a desperate craving for belonging that had been exploited by both Kael and now Vipera. Mara wasn't inherently evil, but deeply wounded. Elara saw a flicker of the wolf Mara could have been, had she not been pushed to the fringes. This knowledge was a double-edged sword: it offered a potential weakness to exploit, but also stirred a strange empathy within Elara. The rogue heart was unveiled, revealing a complex adversary driven by pain, not just malice, presenting a moral dilemma for the approaching final conflict.