**Chapter 27 **
I opened it at dawn.
The leather creaked, pages parting like lips kept silent too long. The handwriting inside was familiar—not because I'd seen it before, but because it looked like mine. Same slant. Same pressure. Same way of crossing t's like they owed her something.
If you're reading this, you're eighteen. You're bonded. And you're probably terrified.
I sat up in bed. The five still slept around me, tangled in quilts and each other, their heartbeats slow and deep through the bond. I took the journal to the window, curling into the chair where Knox usually sat, and read by the gray morning light.
I was eighteen once too. Young. Stupid. In love with five men who didn't know how to share. The bond formed on my birthday, same as yours probably did. The moon rose. The t
