My eyes drop to the letter in my hand.
Cream paper.
Pink wax seal.
Four drops of blood—even number, safe—marking it as mine. Marking it as a piece of myself, sent out into the void in desperate hope that maybe,maybe, someone out there gives a shit whether I live or die.
S.W.
My pen pal.
My ghost.
My only fucking connection to a world outside these blood-soaked walls.
"I guess..." My voice catches. I clear my throat, force it steady. "I guess I can't send this then."
The letter feels heavier now.
Impossibly heavy, like it contains not just words but the weight of every hope I've foolishly allowed myself to feel.
My shoulders sink.
I didn't even realize I was holding them up—braced for impact, prepared for violence, ready for the kind of pain that comes with fists and blades. But this?
This is worse.
This is the slow, suffocating crush of despair that no amount of combat training can protect against.
"I haven't heard from him," I hear myself say, and the words feel like they're coming from somewhere far away. Like I'm watching myself speak from outside my body. "My pen pal. It's been... a month? More than a month. Forty-seven days."
Not that I'm counting.
Except I'm always counting.
Always, always counting.
"That's unusual for him. He's never gone this long without writing back. He's consistent, you know? Reliable. The only reliable thing in my entire fucking existence." My laugh bubbles up again—wrong, broken, the sound of someone losing their grip on whatever thin thread was keeping them tethered to sanity. "Maybe he's dead. Goodness, maybe he's dead, and I've been writing letters to a corpse this whole time. Wouldn't that be just...perfect?"
The word comes out savage, bitter, soaked in ten years of accumulated grief.
Maria's face crumples.
"Sera—"
"It's okay!" I chirp, pasting on my brightest smile—the one that makes people flinch, the one that screamsdangereven as my voice stays sugar-sweet. "Rules are rules, right? I'm sure there's a very good reason why packless Omegas shouldn't be allowed to communicate with the outside world. Probably something about security. Or control. Or just—" my voice cracks, "—making sure we know exactly how worthless we are."
The smile stays frozen on my face, but I can feel my eyes starting to burn.
No. No, no, no. Not here. Not in front of someone. Don't you dare?—
The first tear falls before I can stop it.
It lands on the pink envelope, darkening the paper, and I watch it spread with a kind of detached horror.
I'm crying.
In public.
