My eyes opened, slowly.
The first thing I noticed wasn’t the bed, or the light. It was quiet.
Not total silence. Just… quiet. Like a place that had always been loud, they decided to just stop. No yelling. No boots slamming the floor. No Mira screaming my name from across the hall, or that awful sound of the whip cracking through the air.
Just the soft flap of curtains moving with the breeze… and the gentle, steady crackle of a fire.
Safe.
It felt safe.
Which honestly made me more nervous than anything.
I sat up too fast and instantly regretted it. My whole body shouted back at me—joints tight, ribs sore, like I’d been run over and barely stitched back together. For a second, panic rushed in. Like maybe, I’d wake up back in the pack house and none of this was real. But the memories c
