FREYA Eli doesn’t give me a reply, he just leaves the house and for a week, I don’t see or hear from him. It’s as if he’s vanished from my life entirely, though I know he’s still conducting pack business, still living his life somewhere beyond the walls of this house. The meeting he insisted I attend never happens and It’s as if the entire issue with Victoria and Martin has simply dissolved into thin air, like it never existed at all. Life returns to what passes for normal. Except nothing is normal. There’s a gap between us now, between me and Eli, between me and the life I thought I was building. A gap so wide I can’t see the other side and can’t even begin to imagine how to bridge it. I force myself out of the house and head to the training grounds like every other morning to car

