I went back inside eventually. Found Drav in the nest, and he looked up when I entered. Desperate hope and terrible fear mixing visibly on his face.
"I don't know yet," I said honestly. "I need time to think."
"You have three days."
"I know."
I curled into the furs beside him. He wrapped his wing around me carefully. We didn't breed that night. Didn't speak. Just lay together while I tried to figure out how to choose between two impossible options.
Outside, the portal countdown had started.
My mother's voice echoed through the caves endlessly: 'Come home. I need you.' But home was here—in the nest, in his wings, in the eggs growing inside me. I had three days to break someone's heart.
HALLIE
Day twenty-eight arrived and I couldn't sleep. Couldn't eat. Could barely function past the constant loop of thoughts cycling endlessly through my mind.
Stay or go. Stay or go. Stay or go.
I made lists because that's what I did when decisions felt impossible—actual physical lists carved into a flat piece of obsidian with the knife Drav had given me weeks ago.
What Earth Offers:
Debt cleared
Sector 23 housing (if I can get placement)
Transport logistics job (if they'll rehire)
Underground life
Familiar (safe?)
Human
What Varyn Offers:
Drav (if I leave, he dies)
Eggs (if I leave, they die)
This life (freedom, challenge, purpose)
Already changing (teeth, hearing, copper skin)
Partnership
I'm good at this world
Flying (eventually)
Home
I stared at the lists for hours, sitting at the southern entrance. They should have been equal in weight. Should have been impossible to choose between.
But they weren't equal at all.
Earth offered survival. Varyn offered life.
