I set my suitcase down by the door.
"I love you," I say. "Brother. I always will."
He's quiet for a long time.
"You love the man I used to be," he says finally. "But he's gone now. I'm all that's left."
He turns to look at me.
And I see it. Everything I've watched erode over the past year and a half—the certainty, the warmth, the pack lead who would have died before letting harm come to someone in his house—all of it gone, and what's underneath is just a man. Tired and wrecked and finally, finally out of fight.
"Do it," he says.
I don't make him ask twice.
I reach in and find the bond the way you find something you've carried for so long you've stopped noticing its weight. I pull it, and then I let it go.
Ragon doesn't resist. He doesn't grab back. He just opens his chest and lets me take it.
There's no snap, no violence. Just a door swinging closed, soft on its hinges, the click of the latch moving into place.
A tear cuts down his cheek.
"Goodbye, brother," he says.
I pick up my suitcase and close the door behind me.
Jasper is in the car with the engine running. He looks at me when I get in and doesn't ask, just waits.
"It's done," I say.
He nods and puts the car in reverse.
We pull out of the driveway and I watch the house in the side mirror until the trees take it. I keep waiting to feel anything decisive—relief, or grief, or the specific lightness people describe when they talk about leaving a bad situation.
What I feel is the absence.
Now there's just a quiet where something used to be. It doesn't hurt. It feels empty. Like a room after the furniture's been moved out. You can see the marks where it stood, the dents in the carpet, the slightly-less-faded squares on the wall where pictures used to hang.
I look out the passenger window at the dark road ahead.
"Jasper," I say.
"Yeah."
"She'd better be okay."
He's quiet. Then: "She is."
I nod and settle back into the seat.
Outside, the trees blur past. The road unspools ahead of us.
She'd better be okay.
That has to be enough.
Chapter 29
