Prologue
They call it running scared.
There was nowhere to go—not really—but I refused to stop.
I wouldn’t let them do to me what they did to the others. What they did to Macy.
My breath burned in my lungs, my footing growing unsteady, but I pressed on.
Grass cracked beneath my worn shoes, damp from the night air. My legs trembled, but I couldn’t falter now—not with the howls rising behind me, the pounding of boots closing in. The dogs were catching my scent.
I pushed forward. Blind. Desperate.
Then—the edge.
I skid to a halt, toes curling against the crumbling soil beneath me. My stomach dropped. A steep fall. A waiting abyss.
Below, the water rippled beneath the starlight—an endless stretch of dark blue, fractured only by the silver shimmer of the sky above. To sleep among them… it wouldn’t be the worst fate.
A sharp bark cut through the night.
They were here.
I forced myself to turn. My breath came fast, uneven, my body trembling with exhaustion. And then I saw him.
James.
He didn’t look pleased.
He stepped forward, arms loose at his sides, but I wasn’t fooled. The tension in his shoulders, the way his men hovered just out of reach—they were ready.
“Don’t do this,” he said. His voice was softer than I expected. A coaxing. A trap.
“I can help you,” he continued, taking another slow step. “We can help each other. It’s not so bad if you come back. I’ll protect you, make it good for you. None of this is worth your life.”
A lie.
I swallowed, lips curling into something that barely resembled a smile. “You’re right, James.”
His brows lifted slightly, sensing victory.
“None of this is worth my life.”
His breath hitched. “Exactly, so—”
“I won’t risk going back.”
The words solidified in the air between us, unshakable.
He stepped forward fast—too fast—but I was already falling.
Wind screamed past my ears, cold as ice, ripping through my clothes and biting at my skin. I fell forever.
The world spun around me, fragments of memory flashing—a life of sadness, a past of rejection, pain, abuse.
At the end of the day it was all my fault..
Thankfully it would be all over now.
The one moment—the one sliver of light in the black tar of my past—that surged forward before the water swallowed me whole.
The last thing I did before the icy blast hit—before the world vanished— I smiled.
