Chapter 23

He wanted to know whose. That meant talking to him about many things. Many. We had never talked about others, because our topic of conversation was always the two of us, the skills, the lessons of hunting and survival, the secrets of transformation; I couldn’t imagine how he was going to take the news that he had more family. I foolishly hoped that my friends, those I hadn’t seen in almost nine years, who thought I was dead and buried, would come to me when I asked for help. I didn’t know if they were all still alive, or what would happen. If they remembered me, if they liked me or hated me. I wasn’t even sure if the emergency number worked or was connected to an abandoned phone in a dilapidated office. I trusted a chimera in which I believed with the innocence of a child.

In the state I was in, it was my only chance to contact them.

The severed link was still bleeding, but it was getting weaker.

In the end, I let go and got up with difficulty, holding my foot agai