Inside the room, Sophia sat back down, slowly. The report still lay on the table.
She took it down, read the last sentence, flattened it with her hand and folded it in quarters. It is not fear struggling in her hands, but anger.
Then she whispered it.
“Chloe.”
The name broke the air like a prayer.
She had never spoken it aloud since that night.
Since the full moon.
Since the scream.
Since the blood.
Sophia held her hand to her breast and kept her eyes closed trying to compose the beating of her heart.
She still recalled the laughter of Chloe unfiltered. And how she danced on a meadow, so barefooted, but she was not afraid of the thorns. How she swore she would master the beast within before her fifteenth birthday.
And how Sophia had failed her. Not by fighting her. Not by surviv
