We're bonded now.
Technically, I have a pack. Or the beginning of one.
But probation is a month.
The audition was supposed to be in three days.
And even if Sage's pack accepted me—which they won't,can't, because I'm too broken, too dangerous, toocrazy—it wouldn't be enough time.
It's never enough time.
I stop walking.
The edge of the forest looms ahead—that dark tangle of trees that marks the border between sectors, where academy rules dissolve and only the law of the jungle remains.
The Dead Forest.
Where I was supposed to cross in three days for an audition that's now been canceled.
Where anyone can kill or be killed.
Where the monsters roam free.
Perfect,I think, and the thought tastes like irony.Just fucking perfect.
My mind drifts to Sage.
I wonder if he's read my last letter yet.
The one I wrote two weeks ago, back when I was spiraling deeper than usual, back when the darkness was so thick I could barely breathe through it. The one where I talked about endings and beginnings and the exhaustion of carrying a weight too heavy for one person.
The one where I said goodbye.
Not explicitly.
I was too much of a coward to be explicit.
But between the lines...if he read carefully...if he knows me the way I think he does...
He would understand.
He would be angry…
A smirk curls my lips at the thought.
We're bonded now, which makes my intentions so much worse.
Because bonded meansconnected.
Bonded means he'llfeelit when?—
I stop that thought before it can fully form.
Not yet. Not now. Focus.
My brother's face surfaces in my memory.
Knox.
