CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Everly
Three days before the mark, Dez called with news about Cara that changed the shape of everything Everly thought she understood about the coming week.
"She wants out," Dez said, voice carrying a controlled excitement Everly hadn't heard from him before.
"The intermediary's careful work finally landed.
Cara reached out herself, through channels we'd set up in case exactly this happened — she says she's ready, she's scared, and she wants to come home before Rourke's people realize what she's planning. "
Everly felt her pulse quicken with a complicated mix of hope and immediate concern. "That's wonderful. And terrifying, given everything else happening right now."
"The timing's not ideal, I'll grant you that.
But we can't ask her to wait, not once she's found the courage to actually reach for the door.
Delay risks her losing her nerve, or worse, Rourke's people noticing the shift in her before she can act on it.
" Dez's voice carried the particular urgency of someone already running through logistics.
"I want to move on this within the next two days.
Quiet extraction, minimal force, timed for when Rourke's attention is elsewhere if we can manage it. "
Everly thought immediately of her earlier promise, offered weeks ago on this same porch, to help however she could when the moment finally came. "You said you wanted my perspective, when the time came. Is this that time?"
"It might be. Cara's scared in a way that logistics alone won't fully address — she needs to believe leaving is actually survivable, not just physically possible.
I think hearing that from someone who's actually done it, who understands the specific fear of walking away from something that's convinced you leaving isn't an option, might matter more right now than anything else I could offer her. "
Caleb, listening from across the kitchen, set down the patrol schedule he'd been reviewing. "Are you comfortable with that? Given everything else happening this week?"
Everly considered the question seriously, weighing the emotional weight of what Dez was asking against her own capacity to hold it steady alongside everything else demanding her attention right now.
"I think I need to be part of this, actually.
Not despite everything else happening. Because of it.
If I'm about to choose something as permanent as the mark, as fully committing myself to this pack and everything it protects — I want that commitment to mean something real, starting now, not just once the ceremony's done and it feels safely official. "
Dez's voice carried real warmth through the phone. "Then I'll set it up. A call, first — nothing that risks her safety before we're ready to move. Just a voice, someone who understands, to help her hold steady until we can actually get her out."
The call happened the next evening, Everly sitting alone in the workshop with her phone pressed to her ear, Caleb waiting nearby but giving her the space to handle this conversation without hovering.
Cara's voice, when it finally came through, sounded younger than Everly had expected, fragile in a way that immediately called up every memory of her own worst months with Derek.
"I don't know if I can actually do this," Cara said, barely above a whisper, clearly terrified of being overheard even through a carefully secured line.
"Every time I think I'm ready, something pulls me back.
He tells me I owe them everything, that I'd have nowhere to go, that my brother probably hates me for leaving in the first place. "
Everly closed her eyes, hearing echoes of Derek's exact tactics in every word, the specific architecture of manipulation that trapped people not through obvious force but through carefully cultivated doubt.
"I understand that fear more than you know.
I spent years believing almost exactly what you just described — that I owed someone my whole life for reasons I could never quite name specifically, that leaving meant losing everything, that the people who actually loved me would somehow judge me for finally choosing myself. "
"How did you actually do it? Leave, I mean."
"Badly, at first. I tried twice before it actually worked, and both times I went back within a week, convinced I'd overreacted, convinced the good moments outweighed everything else.
" Everly kept her voice steady, offering the truth rather than a cleaned-up version that might feel less relatable.
"What finally changed wasn't some dramatic moment of clarity.
It was small, actually — a friend who kept the door open no matter how many times I walked back through it, who never once made me feel ashamed for needing multiple tries.
I think that's the part people don't talk about enough.
Leaving isn't usually one clean decision.
It's often several messy attempts before the real one finally sticks. "
Cara was quiet for a long moment, and when she spoke again, her voice carried something steadier underneath the fear. "Your brother — Renner, I mean — is he going to be angry? For everything I've cost him, staying away this long, letting Rourke use our connection against him?"
"He's terrified for you. That's what I understand from everyone who's talked to him.
Not angry. Terrified, and desperate to see you safe, whatever it takes to get there.
" Everly thought of Renner's raw voice during his own confession, the genuine anguish of a man who'd sacrificed his own integrity trying to protect someone he loved.
"Whatever guilt you're carrying about what your situation cost him — I think you'll find he doesn't hold any of it against you.
I think all he wants is to see you home safely, whatever that actually looks like once you get here. "
"I want to believe that."
"You don't have to fully believe it yet.
You just have to be willing to find out.
" Everly kept her voice gentle but firm, understanding exactly how fragile this moment was, how much courage it had already taken Cara to make this call at all.
"I know how impossible this feels right now.
I promise you, from someone who's lived through exactly this kind of impossible feeling — it gets easier once you're actually out.
Not immediately. Not without real difficulty adjusting to a life that isn't built around managing someone else's control.
But easier, eventually, in ways that feel unimaginable from where you're standing right now. "
They talked for another twenty minutes, Everly answering careful questions about extraction logistics, about what waited for her in Blackbriar, about the particular fear of rebuilding an identity after years of having it slowly eroded by someone else's control.
By the end of the call, something in Cara's voice had shifted — still frightened, but steadier, the particular resolve of someone who'd finally found enough courage to reach toward an exit she'd spent two years convincing herself didn't exist.
"Two days," Cara said finally. "Dez said two days. I think — I think I can hold on that long, now."
"You can. And we'll be here, all of us, the moment you're ready to actually cross that line."
After the call ended, Everly sat alone in the workshop for a long moment, feeling the particular exhaustion that came from offering someone else exactly the kind of support she'd once desperately needed and never fully received in time.
Caleb found her there minutes later, settling beside her without asking, simply present in the way she'd come to rely on completely.
"How did it go?" he asked.
"I think it helped. I hope it helped." Everly leaned into him, feeling the weight of the conversation settle alongside everything else the coming days would demand.
"It's strange, talking to someone else through exactly the fear I spent so long drowning in myself.
I keep thinking about how much I needed someone to say those exact words to me, back when I was still trying to convince myself Derek's version of love was the only kind I deserved. "
"You gave her something real tonight. I could hear it, even from across the room.
" Caleb pressed a kiss to her temple, something quietly proud in the gesture.
"Whatever happens with the extraction, whatever comes next with Rourke's timeline — I think you just proved something important.
Not just to Cara. To yourself, maybe, about exactly how far you've traveled from the woman who stepped off that bus. "
Everly thought about that, about the strange, difficult arc of the past month, and felt something settle fully into place — not just readiness for the mark still three days away, but a deeper certainty about exactly who she'd become in the process of choosing Blackbriar, choosing Caleb, choosing to turn her own hardest experience into something that might genuinely help someone else survive theirs.
Whatever Rourke Ashgrove still had planned, she intended to meet it exactly the way she'd met everything else since arriving here — transformed, certain, and absolutely unwilling to let fear make her choices for her ever again.