Chapter 22 #2
"I write letters." A laugh escapes—half genuine, half sad. "As you know. Started as a way to cope, I think. A way to pretend I had someone to talk to, someone who cared, someone who existed outside these walls. Never thought anyone would actually respond."
My eyes find Sage's across the table.
The warmth in his expression makes my chest ache.
"I like even numbers," I continue, because I'm on a roll now and stopping feels impossible. "Everything has to be in fours, or twos, or eights. Odd numbers make me... uncomfortable. Anxious. Like something terrible will happen if I don't correct them."
"OCD?" Jett asks.
"That's what the academy shrinks said." I shrug. "Along with ADHD, PTSD, and a few other acronyms. They love their labels."
"Labels are just words," Sage says quietly. "They don't define you."
"Maybe not. But they explain some things." My toe taps under the table—tap-tap-tap-tap—four times before I force it still. "Why I count. Why I can't stay still. Why my brain sometimes feels like a radio stuck between stations, playing static and fragments of a hundred different songs."
I reach for my wine again.
Take a long sip.
Set it down.
"I have a robot," I add, touching the pendant at my throat where mini-Ro is resting.
"Aphrodite. I call her Ro. Built her during a seventy-two-hour insomnia spiral because I was lonely and desperate and apparently have latent engineering skills.
She's the closest thing to a friend I've had in years. "
"Until us," Blaze offers.
"Until you." The agreement feels strange on my tongue. "Assuming 'friend' is the right word for what we are."
"Pack," Sage corrects. "Pack is the right word."
Pack.
The word settles into my chest like a stone.
Heavy.
Permanent.
Terrifying.
"Were you going to kill yourself?"
The question comes from Sage.
Direct.
Unflinching.
Asking what everyone else was probably thinking but too polite to say.
The table goes silent.
Completely silent.
Even the ambient sounds of the house seem to fade, leaving nothing but the weight of the question hanging in the air between us.
I could lie.
Could deflect, redirect, deploy the sarcasm and bravado that usually serve as my armor.
But these people have seen me at my worst—dying on a stage surrounded by caged enemies, bleeding and poisoned and completely at their mercy. They've read my letters, caught my volleyballs, claimed me in front of an entire academy.
They deserve the truth.
"Yup."
The word comes out casual.
Too casual, maybe, for the gravity of what I'm admitting.
"I was going to. The night we met, actually.
Or the morning, I guess—after I sent what I thought would be my last letter.
" My fingers find the napkin again, twisting.
"I had it all planned out. The dance was supposed to be my final performance.
The cages were supposed to be my last act of defiance. And then..."
I trail off.
And then what?
And then the poison hit too early.
And then a pack of Alphas showed up and refused to let me die.
And then everything changed.
The admission should feel heavier.
Should carry more weight.
But somehow, saying it out loud—in this room, surrounded by these people—makes it feel smaller. More manageable. Like sharing the burden has actually lightened it instead of multiplying the shame.
"How about now?" Sage's voice is quiet. Careful. "Are you still planning to?"
I think about it.
Really think.
Not the automatic deflection, not the rehearsed answer designed to make people stop worrying. An actual, honest assessment of where my head is at.
"I don't know," I say finally. "It's weird. Being here. Being... cared about. Even if this is fake and temporary."
"It's not fake," Sage says immediately.
"Isn't it?" I look at him—at all of them—trying to read the truth in their expressions. "We're doing this to draw out Kai's father. To end a threat. It's a strategy. An alliance. Not a real pack bond."
"Sage bonded you for real," Blaze points out. "That's not fake. That's biology."
"Biology and feelings are different things."
"Are they?" Jett's quiet voice cuts through. "Seems to me like biology just speeds up what was already happening."
I don't have a response to that.
So I keep talking instead.
"The volleyball thing," I say, latching onto something concrete. "That's what's confusing me. You all defended me. In public. Without hesitation. Like it was instinct."
"It was instinct," Sage confirms.
"But why?" I lean forward, needing to understand. "You've known me for two days. Face to face, I mean. Before that, I was just words on paper. Why would you risk anything for me? Why would you care if some asshole threw a ball at my face?"
"Because you're ours," Kai says.
The words are simple.
Final.
No elaboration, no explanation, just the flat statement of fact from the man who should, by all rights, hate me most.
"I'm surprised everyone's falling for it," I admit, sitting back. "The whole pack dynamic. Like we actually have chemistry enough for them to believe it's real."
"Do we not?" Blaze asks, eyebrow raised.
"That's the confusing part." I run my fingers through my hair, tugging at the strands in a gesture that's become habit. "Maybe I'm trying to act like it's not real. Like this is all just pretend, just strategy, just a means to an end that will dissolve the moment it's no longer useful."
One-two-three-four.
My fingers twist in my hair.
One-two-three-four.
"But I like your dynamic," I continue, the words spilling out before I can stop them. "It's odd. Different. I don't know everything about you—I don't know anything, really, beyond surface observations—but there's a balance here. A weird, fucked-up balance that shouldn't work but somehow does."
Silence.
The kind that feels thoughtful instead of uncomfortable.
Then Sage nods.
"Okay. You shared. Our turn." He sets down his fork, pushing his plate aside like he needs to give this his full attention. "I'll go first, since I'm the one who pulled you into this mess."
He takes a breath.
Steadying.
"I was in a performance troupe before this.
Underground circuit. The kind of thing where talent is currency and freedom is a joke no one tells.
" His green-gold eyes go distant, looking at something I can't see.
"They called it 'entertainment,' but it was really just legalized ownership.
They bought us young, trained us hard, and sold our performances to the highest bidder. "
"Escape artist," I say, remembering fragments from conversations and observations.
"Yeah." A rueful smile. "Ironic, right? I could escape any lock, any chain, any cage they put me in—except the invisible one. The one made of debt and fear and the knowledge that if I ran, they'd find me. And when they found me..."
He trails off.
Doesn't need to finish.
"My mother was in the troupe too," he continues quietly. "She refused to sell me when they offered. Said I was her son, not a commodity. So they killed her. Made me watch."
The words land like blows.
Physical.
Devastating.
"I was fourteen," Sage adds, and his voice is eerily calm now—the kind of calm that comes from having processed trauma so thoroughly it's become just another part of the landscape.
"After that, I stopped fighting. Went along with whatever they wanted.
Survived by being exactly what they needed me to be. "
"Until Kai," Blaze supplies.
"Until Kai." Sage's gaze flicks to the pack leader, something complicated passing between them. "He found me during a... business transaction. His family was dealing with the troupe, and he saw something that bothered him. Something about the way they treated me."
"You were fifteen," Kai says flatly. "They were auctioning you off."
"They were renting me out," Sage corrects with dark humor. "There's a difference, apparently. To them, anyway."
"What did you do?" I ask Kai.
"Bought him." The words are simple. "Permanently. Then burned down the troupe compound with everyone inside."
My eyebrows shoot up.
Burned it down.
Everyone inside.
Kai meets my gaze without flinching.
"They deserved worse," he says. "But fire was efficient."
Fire was efficient.
The statement should horrify me.
Should make me question whether I'm sitting at a table with monsters, whether I've traded one nightmare for another, whether these men are any better than the world they're fighting against.
But instead, I feel something that might be... understanding.
They hurt someone he cared about.
So he destroyed them.
Completely.
Efficiently.
Without remorse.
I get that.
I get that more than I want to admit.
"Jett?" I prompt, turning to the silent one.
He doesn't look up from his plate immediately.
Just continues eating with that mechanical precision, like the question is something he needs to finish processing before he can respond.
Then he sets down his fork.
Meets my eyes.
Grey storms and distant lightning.
"I was trained as an assassin," he says, voice flat. "From childhood. My family had... connections. Debts. I was the payment."
The words are sparse.
Minimal.
But they paint a picture.
"They taught me to kill before I knew how to read," he continues. "By the time I was ten, I'd already taken my first target. By twelve, I'd lost count."
"You stopped counting?"
"Numbers stopped mattering." He shrugs—a small, economical movement. "It's all just... motion. Physics. The application of force at the correct angle to achieve the desired result."
Cold.
Clinical.
Completely detached from the reality of what he's describing.
"The training emphasized disconnection," Jett adds, like he's explaining a technical process. "Emotion is liability. Attachment is weakness. I learned to turn it off. To exist in the space between action and reaction, where feeling doesn't reach."
"But you feel things now," I say. "You caught that volleyball. You touched my cheek."
Something flickers in his grey eyes.
Brief.
Quickly suppressed.