Lena's POV
The morning we left Crestfall, I woke before anyone else.
I dressed in the dark and stood at the window of the room I had been given during the engagement proceedings and looked out at the pack town below. The streets were empty at that hour. The familiar shapes of it: the Gamma house roofline, the communal hall, the narrow alley between the two storage buildings where my mother and I had spoken in whispers my whole life. All of it laid out in the blue-grey of early morning, ordinary and permanent and nothing I had ever wanted.
And still.
I had been preparing for this leave-taking in the logical parts of my mind for weeks. I had made the practical decisions. I had said the necessary things. But the body does not care about logical preparation. The body simply registers that
