Chapter 22
ALENA
I don't know what day it is anymore.
The light outside my window has gone from grey dawn to bruised afternoon to black night so many times I've lost count. Time doesn't pass here. It just pools, thick and stagnant, like the vodka sweating in the bottle between my fingers.
Third bottle. Half empty. Or half full. Doesn't matter. It's the only thing keeping the edges from cutting too deep.
I'm on the couch—curled on my side, knees drawn up, Drogo's hoodie pulled tight around me like armor that doesn't fit anymore. The sleeves swallow my hands. The hem rides up my thighs. It still smells like him—smoke and cologne and that indefinable thing that was always just Drogo.
I press my face into the fabric and breathe him in until my lungs burn.
The smell is already fainter, like he's slipping away even from the fabric. Panic claws higher. I press harder, as if I can trap him there.
The whispers are everywhere.
Not just in the corners now. They're in the walls. Under the floorboards. Crawling across the ceiling like insects made of sound.
“Alone.”
“Always alone.”
“He saw what you are and ran.”
I cover my ears with both hands, bottle clinking against my temple, hoodie sleeve soaked with tears and snot and whatever's left of me.
"Shut up," I whisper. Then louder: "Shut up shut up shut up—"
Scratch across my ribs—hot, deliberate, like claws testing how much pressure it takes to open skin.
I don't even flinch anymore. Just curl tighter, knees to chest, hoodie pulled over my head like a child hiding from monsters that live inside her.
Another scratch—lower back this time, deeper, blood warm and wet against the fabric.
The cold has settled in my bones. Frost creeps across the inside of the windows even though the heating's on full. My breath fogs in front of my face with every sob.
The bottle slips from my fingers, rolls across the floor, vodka glugging out in a slow dark stream.
I don't move to pick it up.
Just lie there, face buried in his hoodie, breathing him in like oxygen I don't deserve.
I cry into the fabric—quiet at first, then louder, great wracking sobs tearing out like they're trying to take pieces of me with them.
"Please," I whisper into the fabric. "Please come back. Please don't be dead. Please don't have left me."
A fresh scratch rips across my ribs—hot, deliberate, punishing hope.
The whispers laugh.
Soft.
Satisfied.
Like they've won.
I pull the hoodie tighter, fists clenched in the material over my heart, and cry until there's nothing left but dry heaves and the taste of salt and vodka and despair.
The shadows in the corners thicken, watching.
Waiting.
Knowing I have nothing left to fight them with.
Not tonight.
Maybe not ever.