EMMALINE
I haven’t had a moment of peace since my last conversation with Dante.
Everything I thought I knew has been quietly dismantled, and I’m left standing in the wreckage of it, trying to figure out which pieces were ever real to begin with. I’ve stopped counting the days. I’ve almost stopped thinking about escape — almost — except that every time I get close to giving up, I feel it. The small, insistent weight of my growing bump pressing against my clothes, reminding me that giving up was never really an option.
I’m not alone in this.
I can’t afford to be.
Sometimes I wake convinced it’s all been a dream. That I’ll open my eyes and find myself somewhere familiar — Alexander’s pack house, or my old room, or anywhere that existed before everything fell apart. Then I hear Dante’s vo
