Chapter 13 - Thalia
Morning creeps over the safehouse like frost spreading over glass, inch by hesitant inch. I've been awake for hours, watching shadows retreat from my ceiling, counting the beats between each distant bird call. The sun hasn't quite breached the horizon, but already, the sky outside my window has that peculiar Minnesota winter color—a pale, almost silvery blue that makes everything look slightly unreal.
I hear Rafael before I see him, just like I have all morning. He's been making enough noise to wake the dead—cabinet doors closing with deliberate clicks, footsteps that sound almost choreographed in their loudness as he moves through the kitchen. The coffee maker gurgles and sputters like it's putting on a one-machine orchestra.
A laugh catches in my throat, turns into something closer to a sob. Even now, even after what happened, he's trying to be considerate. Making sure I always know where he is, so I won't have to face him unexpectedly. The thoughtfulness of it feels like thorns wrapping around my heart.
I press my palms against my eyes until starbursts dance behind my eyelids. Last night replays in my mind like a film stuck on loop—the candlelight, the whiskey, the way his fingers felt against my skin. The devastating openness in his eyes when he told me about Stella.
The bitter irony of it all makes me want to scream.
Oh, Maia, I think, rolling onto my side. What would you tell me to do?
I even find myself wishing I could speak to my dad. It’s been so many years since he died, I almost never yearn for his conversation and comfort anymore. Just when things are especially hard and I am especially alone.
But I know what they’d both say. Maia's always been the brave one, the one who never stopped fighting against what the Smoke made us become. Even now, she's probably planning another escape attempt, despite what it cost her last time. Despite what it cost us both.
My dad wouldn’t have said anything. He’d just hug me tight and allow me to let it all out. When I close my eyes and imagine it, I can almost feel his arms around me, even now.
I close my eyes and see them as they both were before everything went wrong—Maia, fourteen years old, practicing roundhouse kicks in my backyard. Her hair was longer then, always escaping whatever elaborate braids her mother attempted. She had a gap between her front teeth that made her whistle when she laughed. My father, grilling for the neighbors, beloved by the entire pack, laughing in the sunlight as he lifted me over the creek we crossed on my way home from school.
Now, she's in a concrete cell somewhere in Illinois, paying for my cowardice with every breath. Now, he’s six feet under the ground in a grave I never get a chance to visit.
My phone buzzes against the nightstand, the sound like bones rattling. I already know what it'll say, but I reach for it anyway. The Smoke's messages have gotten increasingly demanding lately, and their patience is wearing thin.
Immediate action required. Full vulnerability assessment of Rosecreek Pack facilities and defensive capabilities in preparation for attack. Include detailed personnel profiles and security protocols. Priority: Alpha's residence and pack center weaknesses. Raid incoming.
The words swim before my eyes. I stare, but I can’t seem to process what they mean.
They want everything—access points, patrol schedules, the location of every security camera and motion sensor. The kind of information that would let them walk right in and—
My stomach lurches. I see Aris's tired smile as he welcomed me to the pack. Keira's quiet confidence. Byron's protective hovering over his mate, Olivia’s eternal warmth. Percy laughing with the younger pack members, flour dusted across his nose. Zane and Maisie, their whole future wrapped up in the child growing inside her.
Rafael. Rafael, who has undone me.
Something snaps inside me. Before I realize what I'm doing, I've hurled my phone across the room.
It hits the wall with a satisfying crack, the screen spiderwebbing into a thousand gleaming shards.
A sound escapes me—half laugh, half sob. What am I doing?
I remember the first time the Smoke gave me an assignment like this. I was barely twenty, still raw, still not able to compartmentalize. I felt everything so intensely at that time of my life that it felt like it might kill me. I desperately didn’t want to betray that first group. But, of course, I did.
It's just information, the Smoke said. Just names and places. No one gets hurt if everyone plays their part.
But people always got hurt. That's what the Smoke does—they take good things and break them, piece by piece, until there's nothing left but jagged edges and empty spaces where trust used to live. Whatever I once was, they took it and broke it, too. I might have been good once. I’ll never know for sure. It’s long gone now, a person I’ll never meet.
A knock at my bedroom door makes me jump.
I scrub hastily at my face, trying to erase any evidence of tears.
"Thalia?" Rafael's voice is muffled through the wood, hesitant in a way I've never heard before. "I heard... Are you okay?"
"Fine," I call back, hating how my voice shakes. "Just dropped something."
A pause. I can almost see him on the other side of the door, probably running a hand through his hair the way he does when he's worried. The image makes my chest ache.
"Can I come in?"
No, I think desperately. Please. I can't look at you right now.
"I'm fine, Rafael." Another lie. They come so easily now, falling from my lips like the autumn leaves that followed me to this place. "Really."
He's quiet for so long that I think he's left. Then, so softly I almost miss it: "I want to help."
The words hit like a physical blow. I press my fist against my mouth, fighting back another sob. How dare he be so kind to me? How dare he act like I wanted that? A swell of that furious, unhinged kind of grief that comes over me sometimes lashes up in my chest, and my eyes burn.
"Sorry," I whisper. But he's already gone, his footsteps fading down the hallway.
I sink onto my bed, staring at my shattered phone on the floor. The screen still glows faintly, the Smoke's message visible through the cracks. Like everything they touch, broken but still functioning. Still demanding. Still controlling.
Maia's voice echoes in my memory: We're more than what they made us, Thalia.
But am I? The girl who used to dedicate herself to kickboxing matches with the seriousness of a soldier going to war, dreaming of being a hero—she died the same night as our fathers. The Smoke hollowed me out and filled the spaces with lies and betrayal, until I barely recognized myself in the mirror.
And now here I am, caught between the monster they created and something else, something terrifying and novel, scarier in its newness and unpredictability than even the world I know.
The sun finally breaks over the side of the safehouse as the day wears on, painting my room in shades of gold. I stay in bed, unable to bear the thought of getting up. Somewhere in the safehouse, Rafael is probably making more unnecessary noise, trying to give me space while simultaneously letting me know he's there. The sweetness of it makes me want to cry all over again.
I pick up my broken phone, running my thumb over the splintered glass. Each shard reflects a different part of me—the scared teenager, the hardened operative, the woman who felt something last night for the first time in years. The woman who might, finally, be ready to stop running.
Maia’s face flashes through my mind. They’ll kill her, and it’ll be slow.
The very thought makes my chest tight with panic. Besides, the Smoke doesn't let go of their assets easily. They'll burn this whole town to the ground before they let me walk away.
Another knock, gentler this time. "Made coffee," Rafael says through the door. "If you want some."
I close my eyes, feeling tears slip down my cheeks. "Thanks."
One word, barely audible, but it feels like the first honest thing I've said in days.
No matter what happens, I know I will have to lie my way out of this.
I pick up the phone and start typing.