Chapter 38

Blake

She never once tried to come home.

I hear it in my sleep. I hear it in the garage, under the roar of the compressor. I hear it in the shower, in the truck, in the dark at three in the morning when I give up on sleeping and lie there staring at the ceiling.

Jennifer Ashby’s voice, quiet and broken, across her own kitchen table.

If she’d only reached out, even once, we’d have found a way.

She did.

She did reach out. Once. She walked out of Silvercrest at seventeen with nothing, and made it all the way to our river in the dark, barefoot and bleeding, and she reached out to the first face she saw.

Mine.

And I stood there and let my father send her back.

I’ve told myself for seven years that it was the only choice. That Dad was right. That the Council had ruled, and Silvercrest had the law on their side, and if we’d kept her, there would have been war. That I was protecting the pack. Protecting her, even, fr