THE PACK ACCEPTS
Della confirmed it within the hour.
She pressed her hands carefully along his side, her focus absolute, as if she could read truth through touch. Then she straightened and looked at me with that familiar expression, the one balanced between healer and the woman who had known me all my life.
“The internal damage is resolved,” she said.
No embellishment. Just fact.
Then she looked down at her hands.
Something passed over her face, quick, private. I caught it because I had been watching for it since she spoke of cost. It wasn’t grief or regret. It was absence. The quiet recognition of something given away.
“Della,” I said.
“Don’t,” she replied gently. “I told you...I made the choice. I’m not asking for anything from it.”
“I know,” I said. “But I want to try the secon
