My parents are dead. Torn apart by something or someone. My aunt is dead, claw marks on her door that no one wants to explain. I came here because I had nowhere else to go and the Dominion spent weeks systematically determining that I'm nothing worth keeping. Nico proved it. He put it on a screen for everyone to see.No current protection, no pack, no allies.
The thing in my chest where his betrayal lives feels like punishment, like my body's way of telling me I can't even trust my own instincts.
I step closer to the edge. My toes are at the lip now. The wind pulls at me and I let it.
This is the only thing they can't take. The only decision that's still mine.
I lean forward. My fingers loosen on the railing. The wind howls and I can hear my pulse in my ears, fast and desperate. My weight shifts. Just a little more and gravity will do the rest.
I close my eyes.
"They're not worth it."
The voice cuts through the wind and I spin around so fast I nearly lose my balance, my hands scrabbling for the railing.
Knox is in the shadows near the door, half-hidden, completely still. I don't know how long he's been there. Don't know how he moves so quietly that I didn't hear the door open.
My heart is slamming against my ribs now, adrenaline flooding through me because I was seconds away and he stopped it with three words.
"How long have you been there?" My voice comes out rough, unused.
"Long enough." He steps forward slightly and moonlight catches his face. Scars, dead eyes, the build from breaking things with his bare hands.
"Are you here to see me jump?"
"I don't know yet." He says it simply, no inflection.
"Then why say anything?"
He moves closer, each step measured. "Because if you jump, I don't get to finish what I started."
"What did you start?"
"Figuring out what you are. What you smell like. Why you're different." Another step. "You don't smell human. You don't smell fully shifter. You smell like something else."
I laugh and it comes out bitter and broken. "I'm nothing. That's what tonight proved. Nico catalogued everything I am and it fit on a fucking screen."
"You survived the chapel." He's close now, maybe ten feet away, watching me with those flat pale eyes. "You survived the Dominion's trials. You're still standing when they expected you to break weeks ago. You're not nothing."
"Then what am I?"
"That's what I'm trying to figure out." Another step closer. "And I can't do that if you're dead."
"Why do you care?"
"I don't." He says it simply, factually. "But you interest me. That doesn't happen often."
"I'm not a puzzle for you to solve."
"No. You're something else. And I want to know what." He's close enough now that I can see his expression clearly. No pity. No comfort. Just honest interest. "Don't do this. Not for them."
We stare at each other across the space between us. The wind howls and I can feel the drop behind me, the pull of it, the promise of ending.
"Why should I stay?" My voice cracks. "Give me one reason."
"Because dying for them is still letting them win." He tilts his head slightly. "You want to hurt them? Stay alive. Make them regret choosing you as their target."
Something in those words reaches through the numbness.Make them regret it.
