🦋ALTHEA
I sat frozen, the parchment trembling in my hands, my mind a cacophony of panic, calculation, and utter, crushing despair.
They wanted me to run.
During the solstice hunt.
To the eastern edge of the mist.
Where they'd be waiting.
It was a trap.
Obviously, it was a trap.
But it was also a threat.
A real one.
Because Yana was real. Thal was real. And Wren—
My chest seized again at the thought of Wren's name, at what it meant, at what I'd left behind when I fled into the mist.
Wren misses you.
Of course Wren missed me.
Because I'd abandoned them.
I'd run.
I'd chosen survival over—
No.
No.
I couldn't think like that. I couldn't spiral into guilt, not now—not when I needed to think.
But how could I think?
How could I think when the letter incriminated me with every word?
When it made me look like a willing spy, a collaborator, someone who had made a deal with the High Alpha?
