Chapter 11: A Soul's Desperate Gambit

The silence in my small room was absolute. It was the silence of a tomb, of a heart that had stopped beating. Kaine’s words—Return to your quarters—echoed in the hollowed-out space where my hope used to be. The warmth of the battle-forged connection was gone, replaced by a cold so profound it felt like my very blood had turned to ice. He had chosen. In the face of pressure, he had chosen the pack, his duty, his image. He had chosen to treat the fragile trust we’d built as a mistake,...