She doesn't respond.
Can't respond.
But through the bond—faint, fragile, barely there—I feel something that might be acknowledgment.
Or maybe it's just hope.
Jett and Blaze move to flank me as I lift her, carrying her toward the theater's exit, following the path Kai took into the darkness.
Behind us, the caged men groan and bleed and slowly die.
Ahead of us, somewhere in the night, our pack leader is already planning a war.
All I can hope is that our Sweetness survives long enough to witness the ruthless revenge their fearsome leader is already brewing.
CHAPTER 15
Ghosts Of Who We Were
~SERAPHINE~
I'm floating.
The sensation is strange—weightless and heavy at the same time, like being suspended in water that isn't wet. There's no up or down here, no left or right, no cardinal directions to orient myself by. Just endless, velvet darkness stretching in every direction, cradling my body in something that feels almost like peace.
Is this death?
The thought surfaces lazily, without urgency.
Is this what it feels like to finally stop fighting?
I should be afraid.
Should be panicking, clawing at the void, desperately searching for a way back to the light. That's what survivors do—theyfight. They rage against the dying of it, refuse to go gently, make death earn every inch of their surrender.
But I'm tired.
So fucking tired.
The exhaustion goes deeper than bone, deeper than muscle, deeper than the physical vessel that's apparently given up on me. It's the kind of tired that accumulates over a decade of survival—layer upon layer of trauma and violence and the constant, grinding effort of existing in a world that never wanted me to exist in the first place.
Maybe this is okay.
Floating in darkness forever is better than waking up to another day of fighting.
One-two-three-four.
The counting happens automatically—a reflex so ingrained it persists even here, in this strange liminal space between living and dying.
One-two-three-four.
Even my rituals followed me into death.
One-two-three-four.
Or maybe they're what's keeping me tethered.
One-two-three-four.
