Chapter 19
Chapter 119
+25 BONUS
Icrouched just beyond the treeline, the scent of smoke curling around me like a whisper I didn’t want to hear. It clung to my clothes, my skin, the edges of my thoughts. Below, the aftermath of the raid smoldered quietly–embers glowing like dying stars scattered in the dirt, streaks of blood and ash smeared across broken ground.
The silence that followed was worse than the chaos. Emply Finall
It hadn’t been a major strike. A backwater pack barely clinging to Beir territory, their numbers thin, their defenses laughable.
There was nothing down there worth spilling blood for. No strate value. No supplies to resell. No tech. Just a name on someone’s grudge list, probably. Some rogue looking to prove something.
Idiots
They’d wasted energy. Durned lives. All for the Illusion of strength
I should have stopped it. Should’ve stepped in before it turned into the reckless disaster unraveling below me. But Thadn’t. I’d stayed back. Watching from the shadows like I didn’t belong to any of it
Because maybe… I didn’t.
Ipressed my palm against the rough bark of a tree beside me, grounding myself. The forest was quiet now, but the kind of quet that comes after something terrible. The kind that leaves you hollow
It was always like this on the outside looking in. I wasn’t part of the chaos or the clean–up. I wasn’t part of anything. Just the lone figure at the edge of the woods, watching the world keep spinning without her.
A knot tightened in my chest
I wasn’t a part of the pack I’d once called home.
I wasn’t a part of the rogues–not really. Not fully.
I was in–between. Floating Forgotten.
And Goddess help me, I w
I wanted to belong. I wanted to feel like I has something–someone–that was mine. A place where I wasn’t just tolerated. Where I didn’t have to prove myself over and over just to keep breathing
But all I had was this
Smoke in my lungs. Blood in my memories. And silence that wrapped around me like a shroud.
I pushed off the tree, feeling sorry for myself, ready to move on to whatever life held for me.
And that’s when I felt it
The bond snapped.
It wasn’t loud or dramatic. It didn’t break like glass or thunder or re. It just… ended. Like a flame burning down to nothing. One moment it was there–faint and pulsing in the back of my chest–and the next it was gone.
My breath caught.
I pressed my hand to my ribs, like I could hold it in. Like I could stop the absence from swallowing me whole.
But I couldn’t.
He was dead.
My father. The monster who made me.
Chopter 9
+25 BONUS
He was dead
Therellet hit me first. Like wind through a window that had been bolted shut for years, I could breathe–really breathe–for the
ist tune in a long time. The constant pressure in my lungs vanished.
The fear, the rage, the invisible leash around my spine… gone.
But then the rest followed. Guilt. Disorientation. That bitter taste you get when you finally win the fight, but you’re still bleeding
Because he was my father,
And I hated him.
But he was also the reason I was still alive.
I stared down at the ruin below. My vision blurred for a moment–not from lears, exactly, but from something that lived deeper than that. Something rotten and buried.
He was the one who taught nie to survive. Who told me strength was everything. Who snapped my childhood in half and shaped
me into a weapon.
d now the weapon was free.
And
My hands curled into fists
He took everything from me. My pack. My friends.
My mate.
Thadn’t thought about him in a long time. Not by name. Not by voide.
But in that moment, I could feel the echo of it all–the bond he’d rejected, the disgust in his eyes, the venom in his voice when he told me I was no better than the rogues we fought.
But I wasn’t a rogue
Icertainly hadn’t been born one.
And I was still here.
I stood and turned away from the smoldering field. My steps were slow at first, then faster. The forest closed around me as I moved through the trees, branches catching on my jacket like they wanted to hold me back.
22
