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"Completely serious. I know this affects you too, your career built around managing mine, and I'm sorry for whatever complications this creates. But I can't keep performing a life that nearly got me killed just because it's the life everyone expects me to want back."

"I'm not upset about my own career, Zoey. I'm worried about you making a massive decision this permanent while you're still processing genuine trauma." Ava's voice softens, genuine concern replacing the earlier confusion. "Are you sure this isn't just running from what happened instead of actually healing from it?"

The question deserves real consideration, and I take my time answering it honestly instead of dismissing the concern outright. "I think I spent months running from what happened, actually. Running scared, running paranoid, running from anyone who might hurt me the way Simon did. What I found up here wasn't running anymore. It was finally stopping long enough to figure out who I actually am underneath everything fame built around me. I'm not choosing this because I'm afraid of my old life. I'm choosing it because I finally know what I actually want instead of what everyone else expected me to want."

"Okay." Ava's voice carries genuine acceptance now, whatever professional concerns she initially raised giving way to something warmer. "I trust you know your own mind better than I do at this point. What do you need from me? How do we handle this publicly?"

We spend the next hour working through practical details, drafting language for a public statement announcing an indefinite hiatus, working through the label's likely response, figuring out how much explanation the public actually needs versus what I'm entitled to keep private. Kellan stays close throughout, occasionally offering input on security concerns but mostly just present, steady support while I navigate closing out a chapter of my life that nearly destroyed me.

"You're doing the right thing," he says once the call finally ends, watching me set the receiver down with hands that aren't quite steady despite the certainty underlying the decision. "I know that doesn't make it easy."

"It's not easy. Some part of me still misses parts of that old life, the music especially. I don't think that ever fully goes away." I lean into him, grateful for the steadiness he offers without ever demanding I feel differently than I actually do. "But I don't miss the fear, the constant performance, the exhaustion of never knowing who actually wanted me versus what I represented. That part I'm genuinely happy to leave behind."

"You don't have to leave the music behind completely. Just the version of it that nearly got you killed."

"I know. Maybe eventually I write again, just for myself instead of an entire industry demanding constant output. I think I'd like that, actually. Music without the machinery built around it."

That evening, once the label's official statement finally goes out, brief and carefully worded, announcing my indefinite hiatus without explaining the full complicated truth behind it, I sit with Kellan on Yvonne's porch and let myself finally process everything the last several months have actually cost me. The attack itself, the fear that followed, the isolation I initially thought would only be temporary. All of it settling now into something I can finally look at honestly instead of running from.

"I never really let myself grieve what happened," I admit, watching evening settle gold and quiet over the mountain. "Not properly. I just kept moving, kept managing the fear instead of actually processing it."

"You're allowed to grieve it now. The danger's actually over. You don't have to keep surviving instead of feeling."

"I know. I think that's what I'm finally doing, honestly, now that I'm not constantly bracing for whatever comes next." I let myself feel the full weight of everything, the fear, the violence, the months of isolation, without trying to manage or minimize any of it. Kellan stays close throughout, steady presence rather than active intervention, understanding instinctively that I need to move through this on my own terms rather than being rescued from the difficulty of actually feeling it.

Eventually the grief settles into something quieter, still present but no longer overwhelming, and I find myself simply grateful, for the mountain, for the pack, for the man beside me who's never once asked me to be anything other than exactly who I actually am.

"Thank you," I say eventually, "for never making me choose between healing properly and having you beside me while I do it."

"You never had to choose that. I'm not interested in a version of you that skips past what actually happened just to arrive somewhere comfortable faster. I want you whole, Zoey. However long that actually takes."

"I think I'm getting there. Slowly, but actually getting there. This is the first time in months I've felt like healing was actually possible instead of just something I kept promising myself eventually."

We sit together as full dark settles over the mountain, the last practical door from my old life finally closed, replaced by something uncertain but genuinely mine, chosen freely instead of survived out of necessity.

34

KELLAN

Ifind Everett at the old memorial site three days after Zoey's call with Ava, the small clearing where the pack gathers each year to honor the members lost the same night my parents died.

Everett doesn't seem surprised to find me here, settling onto the flat rock he's occupied during every remembrance I can recall since childhood. "Didn't expect to find you out here outside the usual gathering."

"Wasn't planning on it. Just ended up here." I study the markers, my parents' names carved simple and permanent among the others lost that same night. "Everything's actually resolved now. Cross is gone, Simon's facing real consequences, the pack's safe. I should feel like this is finished."

"But you don't."

"No." I admit it plainly, something I wouldn't have offered so easily even a month ago. "I keep thinking about them. About whether they'd understand what I've let myself want now, whether loving Zoey this completely somehow dishonors what happened to them protecting this pack's secrecy."

Everett considers that for a while, the same patient thoroughness he brings to every difficult conversation. "You've spent seventeen years believing that loving someone deeply enough to lose them is the worst possible outcome life can offer you. I understand where that conviction comes from. I watched what losing your parents did to you, watched you build your entire adult life around avoiding exactly that kind of vulnerability."

"It kept me safe."

"Did it? Or did it just keep you alone, mistaking isolation for safety because isolation felt more manageable than genuine risk?" His voice carries no judgment, just the same steady honesty he's offered me since I was eighteen and grieving too badly to function. "Your parents didn't die because they loved too much, Kellan. They died protecting something larger than themselves, the same way any of us might if this pack's survival demanded it. That's not a cautionary tale about avoiding love. That's just what genuine devotion sometimes costs."

"I know that intellectually. Doesn't mean the fear fully goes away just because I understand where it came from."

"No, it probably doesn't. Fear like that rarely disappears completely, even once we understand its origins. I lost my own mate years before you were born, before I became Alpha. I understand something about carrying loss while still choosing to keep living fully despite it."