[Killian]
I wake at 4:17. Not from a nightmare. I'd prefer a nightmare—nightmares have edges, shapes, something to identify and dismiss. This is just absence. A hollow pull behind my sternum, like a fist-sized hole someone carved out while I slept and forgot to stitch closed.
I sit on the edge of the bed. Reach inward, out of habit, searching for my wolf.
Silence.
He's still there. I feel him during full moons—a dull pressure behind my ribs, the vestigial pull of a transformation that still technically works. But he doesn't speak. Doesn't push. Doesn't rage or beg or claw at the inside of my skull the way he used to. He just exists, curled in the deepest fold of my consciousness like an animal that's decided to die but hasn't gotten around to it yet.
This is what I wanted. No more los
