The hollow wolf

and that's how I know I'm alive. You don't c

se some animal part of me understands that stopping means dying again, and onc

creaming into open air that tastes lik

ie there, chest heaving, staring up

e comes out wrong. Too h

ook down at them, they're shaking wrong - smaller knuckles, pal

stop, because that'

he sound on hands and knees like something newborn. When I r

e. Eyes the wrong color - not gray, but somet

say to the water.

the torn edge of a dress I don't remember putting on. Everything is unfami

o hear it, just to make sure it still bel

and I let myself shake, because there's no one here to see it, no one to judge

y, watching in silence while I was marched out to die. I remember Cassian standing at the front

nt it stopped. The

nd cold water and s

breath fogs in front

be for someone who just tore herself out of the ground. It's steady. Too steady. Like this body

h myself against the trunk of a birch tree,

t mine, and settles somewhere deep in my chest. I wrap my arms around myself and force my legs

fill the silence with something other than my own ragged breat

ut loud makes it feel less like a nightmare and more l

otten. I dig through it with fingers that won't stop trembling and find a torn strip of paper

Voss. G

mouth. It doesn't feel like mine. It doesn't feel like anythi

ried with the body they executed. Whoever put me in the ground we

e made sure I

s stands up at once. I spin, crouched low before I even deci

hrough the trees, just the s

under my ribs I'm almost afraid to find - a low, familiar

isper. "Are

all. Not gone. Just quiet. Just as lost as I am, maybe, trying

half a sob. "Good. Good, at leas

then - Grimwood Territory, the wrong side of two different borders f

t it still does, after everything, after he stood there and

elf, wiping mud from my cheek with the ba

s name in my head - that same old pull, stitched somewhere under

tever truth I had left - they're going to answer for it. And there's onl

where it

ter around my shoulders, and start walking east, toward Rook Terri

fall apart if I'm not gentle with it. It's the only proof I have that this

o guess - that whoever wanted me gone isn't finished, a

re like the woman I used to be before all of this. "Whatever you did to

ear it - a low growl, close, too close,

m standing in unclaimed woods wearing a stranger's body with no pack, no n

comes agai

don't know ye