The trees swallowed the last of the light within minutes, and I still hadn’t decided where I was walking to.
That was the problem with being cast out with nowhere to go to, you didn’t get a destination, just a direction, away, and I’d been walking through the border without any plan beyond staying upright.
My arm throbbed where the gauze was taped down.
Every few minutes my vision would blurred, just slightly, just enough to remind me how much blood I’d given up in that little room with Astra watching like it was something to enjoy.
I kept hearing his voice.
*Let go, Maeve.*
I didn’t understand why that memory was the one that wouldn’t leave me alone instead of the pain in my arm or the cold creeping into my hands.
Maybe because some part of me was still standing on that stone floor, still waiting for him to turn around and take it back.
He wasn’t going to.
I knew that.
Knowing it and feeling it were two different things, and my body hadn’t caught up to what my mind already understood.
A branch snapped behind me.
I stopped walking, my breath catching hard in my throat.
I’m in the rogue territory already, and I had no wolf to scent the air, no claws, no pack bond humming under my skin to call for help even if there had been anyone left who’d answer.
I was wolfless and alone and bleeding, and every instinct I had screamed at me to run even though I didn’t know which direction was safe.
I heard another snap very close.
“Well, well.” The voice came out of the dark before the figure did, low and amused in a way that made my stomach drop.
“Smell that? Hellfang blood, and weak. Practically walked right up to us.”
Two figures stepped out of the tree line, then a third.
Rogues the kind of wolves who’d been cast out of packs for cruelty or worse, the kind who didn’t answer to any Alpha or any law.
I backed up a step, my heel catching on a root, and I had to throw a hand out against a tree trunk to keep from falling.
“Please,” I said, hating how hollow my voice sounded.
“I don’t have anything. I’m not looking for trouble.”
“Don’t need you looking for it.” The nearest one grinned, showing too many teeth.
“It found you.”
I turn and ran.
I didn’t think about it, didn’t plan it, my body just moved before my mind caught up, crashing through underbrush that tore at my arms while my lungs burned and my legs, already unsteady from the blood loss, threatened to give out with every stride.
Behind me I heard them laughing, unhurried, like they knew exactly how this was going to end and were enjoying making me run for it first.
I didn’t get far.
A hand closed around my injured arm and yanked me backward, and the pain that shot through me was sharp enough to make my knees buckle.
I hit the ground hard, dirt and leaves under my palms, and when I looked up there were three of them standing over me instead of just the one who’d grabbed me.
“Fight,” the tallest one said, almost bored.
“It’s more fun when they fight.”
I did fight.
I don’t know where the strength came from but maybe there wasn’t any left, maybe I was running on something underneath strength entirely, pure refusal, the same stubborn instinct that had marched me into Darius’s study two hours ago.
I clawed and kicked and screamed until my throat turned sore, and for a moment I actually thought I might get free, might find some gap in the circle they’d made around me.
Then one of the rogues picked up a big trunk of a tree and struck the side of my head, and my vision tilted so violently I lost track of which way was up.
I was on the ground again.
I didn’t remember falling.
My arm was on fire, and somewhere distant I registered that one of them had opened a wound that hadn’t been there before.
My vision kept sliding in and out, dark at the edges, and through the haze I thought, absurdly, of Darius’s hands on my shoulders, tracing the collar of my shirt the way he used to before any of this happened, before I became something worth throwing away.
*This is how it ends,* I thought.
Just this.
Alone, in the dark, in territory that didn’t belong to anyone who’d miss me.
Somewhere above me, one of the rogues said something I couldn’t make out anymore.
The sounds were starting to blur together, distant and underwater, the same way Darius’s rejection had sounded hours ago in that hall.
My fingers curled weakly against the dirt.
I thought about how strange it was, that after everything the collar, the mark, the years of trying to be enough this was what finally undid me.
Not a decree.
Not Astra’s smile.
Just rogues and blood and a body that is too weak to hold on any longer.
My eyes closed slowly.
The last thing I could picture well was right before the dark took the rest of my consciousness, was movement at the edge of the tree line, a figure, low and fast, cutting through the underbrush toward the sound of my own ragged breathing.
I didn’t know if it was coming to save me or finish what the rogues had started.
I didn’t get the chance to find out before everything went black.