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He punches the desk so hard his fingers crack. “God fucking damn it.”
“How?” Orion falls into a chair. “Oh, God.”
Finn is next.
He’s quiet.
With eyes dark and dangerous as hell pits, he absorbs the report. When he’s had enough, he sets it on the desk and starts counting his knives, muttering. “Didn’t bring enough.”
The chill in his voice is so absolute, it rattles me in the half-here space where I’ve been drifting.
“Read it,” Hikaru insists.
“I’ve seen her file.” I read every page when the girl I thought was gone suddenly resurrected into my life.
“You read the whitewashed version. This is Lilah’s version of events.”
I’m slow to pick up the folder, clinging to my last shred of sanity.
But I already know.
This is when I break.
The printed pages are all familiar. When the dads placed Lilah in our pack, I did my due diligence.
Every word confirmed the lies I’d built like a glass castle.
Lilah was a troublemaker.
Lilah did things she shouldn’t.
Went places and saw things that weren’t for her eyes.
Lilah had become a female just like them.
The pure girl I’d loved was long gone.
Lies.
Page one, line one.
Lilah bit a student. Was sent home without dinner.
Hikaru’s compact notes reveal the truth in stinging red ink.
Attacked by three, bit one in self-defense, and was punished with no food for 48 hours. Six years old.
Broke a window with a baseball bat becomes broke out of the classroom she was locked into overnight.
Not “threatened Trainer Isaiah,” but warned off a staff member who was later fired and jailed as a predator.
The lies fall away.
Falling.
Falling.
Crash.
