Chapter 7: Alone With It
610 Words
Her house felt different with the door locked behind her.
Smaller, somehow. She sat on the edge of her bed still wearing yesterday's clothes and looked at her own wrist like it belonged to someone else.
One lunar cycle. She said it out loud, just to hear how absurd it sounded outside her own head.
She didn't cry. Instead there was a low, steady hum underneath everything — not quite fear, not quite anger.
She tried to do something normal. Made tea like any other morning — same chipped mug she'd used for four years, a gift from Kade, second winter, some joke about an ugly market stall find. She'd kept it because she liked it and because he'd looked pleased when she laughed.
She looked at the mug now and felt something crack open that had nothing to do with tea.
He knew. The whole time — mugs, jackets, a wall to sit on — he'd known what she was. Every small kindness had existed inside a truth he'd decided she didn't get to have.
She set the mug down harder than she meant to. The sound was sharp, satisfying in a way that immediately made her feel guilty.
This isn't fair. Four years grateful, and the gratitude had been built on a foundation he'd shaped without her. She didn't get to be angry at the elders — they'd never pretended otherwise. But Kade. Kade she was furious with, and the size of it surprised her.
"You don't get to do that," she said out loud, to the empty kitchen. "You don't get to decide what I can handle and then act surprised when I'm angry about it."
Nobody answered. But saying it loosened something under her ribs she hadn't registered as a knot until it started to give.
She thought about leaving — just for a second. Packing the duffel bag at the back of her closet, walking past the eastern fence line before anyone noticed.
She let herself sit with it exactly as long as it took to recognize it as fear wearing a disguise, then set it down too. She wasn't running. She'd done too much of that before Hallowmere to mistake it for anything else.
She drank the tea cold, both hands around the mug, holding onto it despite everything it now represented.
She must have dozed sitting up, because she woke to gray morning light and a stiff neck.
Someone had left something outside her door — a small folded paper, half under the mat. She almost didn't pick it up.
She picked it up anyway.
No name. Four lines, unfamiliar handwriting, ink smudged like it had been written in a hurry.
They already know what you are. Not just your pack. Outsiders. The Voss bloodline isn't just rare — it's wanted. Watch who you trust with the mark, and watch the trees past the eastern fence line. Someone's already watching you back.
She read it three times. The words didn't rearrange into anything less alarming.
Her hand found the doorframe — her body developing a habit of reaching for solid things right before the floor tilted again.
Voss. Her own last name, used like it meant something specific.
She looked toward the eastern fence line. Nothing moved. That was somehow worse.
She folded the note small, held it against her chest — anger and fear sitting strangely close together now.
Then she went to find Kade. Whatever this was, she wasn't doing it alone. But she wasn't done being angry at him either, and she had a feeling both things were about to be true in the same room at the same time.
- Writer
