Chapter 31.5
The letter arrives on a Tuesday, a month after the challenge. ?
It’s in the morning post — actual post, paper in an envelope, Soleil’s handwriting on the front. She addressed it to Luna Sasha Vasik, Ironholt Healers’ Commune. My full name, and my full title. The envelope is cream-colored and slightly crumpled, like she carried it around for a while before mailing it.
It’s in my pocket all day before I take it with me to the archive, and I even manage to forget about it while things are busy. But eventually I run out of excuses. It’s getting dark as I sit at the table where Aleks usually sits in the lamplight, with a cup of tea that’s already going cold, and I open it.
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Sasha,
I’m writing this letter instead of calling because I don’t trust myself to say any of it out loud, and because six years of silence is a lot. I’ve spent years pretending things were different, letting other people think things about you that I knew weren’t true when I could have stopped them. I won’t do that any more. You deserve better and you always did. If I say it on paper, I can’t adjust my tone. I can’t watch your face to see if it’s landing right. I just have to mean it and hope.
The boys are well. Callum is gaining weight — slowly, but Kaila says his curve is steady and his arrhythmia is almost gone. He sleeps better than Luca, which surprises everyone. Luca is loud and furious and hungry all the time, and Kaila says that’s exactly what she wants to see at five weeks too. I am tired in a way I didn’t know a body could be, and I am more in love with both of them than I have ever been with anything in my life, which is a thing I need you to know before I say the rest.
Petra won’t call herself alpha, but she’s running the territory, and I think everyone acknowledges that she is now. I don’t know how to describe what it’s been like to watch her do it, except to say that I spent years believing I understood what an Alpha’s work looked like, and I was wrong. There isn’t any hedging to make people happy or catering to different groups feelings to make sure everyone agrees without an argument. She just does the work — early, thorough, unglamorous. She reinstated Emerson’s full budget in her first week and plans to restart the apprenticeship program you trained through as soon as the staffing allows. She’s interviewing two new healers from the commune’s training program, and Emerson looks five years younger, which mostly means his shirt fits again.
Margot is being a problem, but Petra has it under control.
I need to tell you about this because it matters and because I think you deserve to hear it from someone who was in the room. Three days after you left, Margot went to the elders — what’s left of them, because Petra dissolved the council, backed up by Emerson — and petitioned to have Petra’s appointment reviewed. She framed it as a concern about stability. She said the pack needed experienced leadership, that an outsider couldn’t understand the territory’s needs, that the transition was too fast. She talked about continuity and sounded very reasonable. I was worried, or I would have been if I was in the room, but I didn’t hear about it till after.
Petra let her finish and then completely shut her down. She told her that she had the power to change things for the last 20 years, as Luna herself, or by advising Ronan to do things differently. Better.
Margot sat down and made that face she does when you’re being rude but she’s too polite to call you on it, and that was the end of it. Petra didn’t raise her voice once.
I’m telling you this because I want you to know that Petra did what none of us could do — she held a mirror up to Margot without flinching, and Margot finally had to look. I don’t know if she’ll change. But the pack saw it. Everyone in that room heard Petra name the thing Margot spent twenty years hiding behind kindness, and nobody defended her. And I don’t know if that’s good, because she deserved it and Petra’s right, or if it’s bad, because none of us are used to standing up for someone if the person saying a thing is in charge. Probably a little of both.
Now the part I don’t want to write.
Ronan is in the border region somewhere.I don’t know where he’s living, but he was out of our pack’s territory before sundown, as the Council ordered. He sends me letters from wherever it is and they’re just… I don’t know why I thought he was a good alpha. Each one is more careful than the last, the handwriting getting neater, the arguments getting more polished, and I can feel him working on me the way he worked on everyone — finding the angle, figuring out which version of himself will get through the door.
He asks about the boys. Every letter. How much they weigh, whether Callum’s heart is stable, whether Luca has his eyes. He asks me to send photographs. He asks if Petra would allow supervised visits. He asks carefully, reasonably, and every letter ends with some version of “when you’re ready” or “whenever you think it’s appropriate,” and it’s so performative it makes my teeth ache because I know him too. I learned from you — from watching you learn — what his patience looks like when it’s real and what it looks like when it’s strategy, and I can’t always tell the difference anymore. I believe he loves the boys. I believe he loves me. I don’t know what else he wants.
I haven’t written back.
But part of me wants to, Sasha, and it makes me sick. Why do I want to? I shouldn’t. I read his letters and my chest hurts and I miss him and I hate myself for missing him, because I stood in your hospital and said “I love him and I know he’s a bad man” and I meant every word and the love didn’t go away when he did. It just sits in my chest alongside the knowing, and they don’t cancel each other out. I thought they would. I thought watching him lose everything would cure me. It didn’t. It just made the love hurt more and the knowing louder, and I carry both of them around all day while I feed our sons and try to figure out who I am now.
I’m not leaving. I’m choosing to stay here, for the boys and for myself and because leaving would mean choosing Ronan over everything I told you in that hospital room, and I won’t do that. I won’t be the woman who confessed everything and then crawled back to the man I confessed about. But I want you to know that it’s a choice I make every day, not a conclusion I arrived at once. Some days it’s easy. Some days Luca does something with his face that looks exactly like Ronan holding him in the clinic, and I have to put the baby down and go stand in the bathroom and breathe until the wanting passes.
I’m not asking for your sympathy. I’m not asking for your forgiveness — you told me “not now, maybe not ever,” and I heard you, and I’m not going to be the sister who keeps asking until you give in just to make me stop. I’m writing because you asked me to tell you the truth, in that room, and I’m trying to keep doing it even when you’re not in front of me making me.
Emerson says hello. He says the commune changed his life, and yours, and he’s grateful. He said to tell you the new suture kits arrived and they’re better than the ones you used to order, and that you’ll know what that means.
I don’t know what we are. Sisters, still, by blood. Maybe something else, someday, built on honesty instead of performance. I’m not going to push for it. I’m going to raise my sons and try to be braver than I’ve been and write you letters you don’t have to answer.
The boys are sleeping. It’s late. The house is quiet in a way it never was when Ronan was here — not empty, just still. I’m learning that still and empty are different things.
Soleil
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I fold the letter up again, and slide it back into the envelope, setting it on the table in front of me.
It’s gotten late while I’ve been sitting here reading it, and while I meant to spend some time reading more of the archive, like I do almost every evening, tonight, it doesn’t feel right. I’m still lost in thought when I hear a noise from the doorway and look up. Aleks.
“You’re sitting in my seat,” He says dryly, because we always do sit in the same chairs but tonight I broke the pattern and he wants me to know he noticed, and he wants to know why. Not demanding, but because he cares about why I do what I do, not just if I do it.
“Soleil wrote to me,” I pick up the letter again running my thumb over the crease in the envelope. “It’s… it’s nothing I didn’t expect. Ronan’s gone. The babies are doing well. Petra’s surprising everyone because I don’t think anyone in that pack ever paid attention to anything around them, really.”
Aleks crosses the room to stand behind me, leaning down to wrap his arms around me. “You did. And that’s why you left.”
“I left because I couldn’t stand to watch someone choose my sister over me.” I said. Aleks’ arms tighten around me. “Because looking away was better than erasing myself completely to fit the mold they wanted me to.”
“You left because half of a life, one where no one saw what you did or who you were, was never going to be enough.”
I lean back into his arms, letting the letter go—this life, this choice, and in this moment, I am part of a life where I am completely whole.