The shower should have helped.
It didn’t.
Hot water hit my skin and slid down in quiet streams, washing away smoke, sweat, and the stale scent of council chambers, but none of it touched the real thing.
The hearing was still in me. The file was still in me. Kade was still in me, which was frankly the most offensive part.
I stood under the water until the bathroom mirror fogged completely and the world outside the glass disappeared. For a few blessed minutes, there was no pack. No Liam. No Selene. No old men with ledgers. No moon-marked lies.
Just heat.
Just breathing.
Just me trying to remember what it felt like to belong to myself before everyone else started discussing the shape of my future like it was a seating arrangement.
But the thing about truth is that once it gets under y
