Five years of anonymous connection, of careful vulnerability, of two broken people finding each other through the mail system like messages in bottles cast into an indifferent sea.
And now I know who she is.
S.E.
Cotton candy girl.
The beautiful, broken Omega who blushes when you hold her wrist and says things likesmoking alone is lonely as fuck, don't you think?
My pen pal.
My secret.
My—
The thought cuts off as I round a corner and the outdoor recital hall comes into view.
And I see them.
The letters.
They're hanging everywhere—suspended from the rigging system, swaying in the growing wind like the most macabredecorations ever conceived. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. Cream-colored pages covered in handwriting I know intimately, displayed not for admiration but forhumiliation.
Someone did this.
Someone took her sacred things—the copies she kept safe, the records of her devotion—and strung them up like laundry for anyone to see.
Foreveryoneto see.
The rage that blooms in my chest is immediate and absolute.
It's not the cold, calculated anger I've cultivated over years of survival. Not the detached fury I use when eliminating obstacles or protecting my pack. This is hot, volcanic, and absolutelyferal, the kind of emotion that demands blood payment for the offense committed.
I want to find whoever did this.
Want to track them down through every valley, hill, road, and alleyway of this godforsaken academy until I locate every single person who thought this cruelty was acceptable.
Then I want to make them regret ever being born…
But I don't move yet.
Can't move.
Because she's there.
Standing in the center of the display, surrounded by her own words, her own heart, her own vulnerability exposed to the darkening sky and the rain that's beginning to fall.
I watch from the shadows—invisible, silent, aching—as she takes in the scope of what's been done to her.
Her body language shifts in stages.
First:confusion.
Her head tilts, pink ponytail swaying, mismatched eyes scanning the hanging pages like she can't quite process what she's seeing. Her footsteps are hesitant as she moves deeper intothe display, each one accompanied by a subtle tap of her toe—counting, I realize. Grounding herself through ritual.
One-two-three-four.
I can almost hear it.
