Angela's POV The tears wouldn't stop. I stopped trying to make them. Why does it always slip? I asked no one. Every time I hold on to something — it goes. My father. The Carter bloodline — three generations of pack standing, stripped overnight when he died. Everything we'd built, absorbed into Fireflies Pack administration while my mother and I watched from the outside. Jake. And now the pup. The one thing that had been mine alone, that had nothing to do with anyone else's decisions or cruelties. Gone too. Every loss had the same quality — sand slipping through my fingers. I could close my fist as tight as I wanted. It made no difference. The thing I was trying to keep simply passed through and was gone, and I was left holding empty air. Silvia wasn't howling anymore. She'd moved int

