🌙𝐋𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐡
No.
No…
No—
I failed.
After all the training, the emotional tangle that I had to work through, the hurt, the promise to myself—to mom.
I had faltered and let myself be caught.
If it had been Vernoique, I would have been dead, my gaping hole where my jugular should have been.
The realization hollowed me out faster than fear ever could.
This wasn't just a mistake.
This was failure with a face.
My mother had bled out on cold asphalt while I learned how to survive. While I learned how to run. While I learned how to be strong enough to kill the man who had broken her life and left me as evidence of his cruelty.
And here I was.
Pinned to the forest floor by another Alpha, lungs still burning from a chase I had lost, my body trembling not from pain but from the sickening understanding that if I could not evade this—if I could not survive a controlled hunt meant to sharpen me—then I had no right to think myself capable of vengeance.
