He saw Lamb.
That same terrified courage.That same fragile defiance.The same way she looked at the world like it might hurt her… but she would love it anyway.
If Atlas hadn’t let Neve live, none of this would have happened.Or maybe all of it would have.
That’s the curse of grief—you start bargaining with the past like it can be rescinded.
If Lamb hadn’t died, Alessio wouldn’t have been dragged into the dark.
If my mother hadn’t broken, we might have stayed a family instead of becoming a pack of angry wolves.
If Neve hadn’t come between Atlas and fate, maybe Alessio would still be alive.
Or maybe fate would have taken him anyway.
And if Neve hadn’t been there to anchor Atlas when Alessio died… I might have lost both my brothers instead of one.
There was no way of knowing.There was only now.And Alessio was gone.
The rage in me was a living thing.It filled my chest, my throat, my hands.It burned hotter with every second I remembered the phone lighting up and me not answering.One stupid, careless moment that may have changed everything.
Or maybe not.
I stood in the bathroom, staring at my reflection.
A man I didn’t recognize stared back.Red-eyed.Hollow.Furious.The curls that everyone always loved fell around my face like a mockery of the boy I used to be.
There was a razor in my hand.For a moment, even I didn’t know what I was going to do.Grief makes you reckless like that.I lifted the razor to my scalp and pressed.
Hair slid down into the sink.Thick, dark curls falling like pieces of the past I didn’t deserve to keep.I kept going.Again and again.Until my head was bare and cold and raw beneath my fingers.
I looked up.
A stranger stared back now.Harder.Piercing.Stripped of softness.
Because softness had gotten Lamb killed.
Softness had broken my mother.
That same softness had let Alessio die while I ignored my phone.
I wiped my face and met my own eyes in the mirror.
The only way to honor Alessio wasn’t to follow him into the dark.
It was to live.
To remember him.
To carry him.
To move forward so his life hadn’t been for nothing.
Three things had shaped me.
Three fractures that carved their way into my bones and stayed there.
And every step I took from that moment on—every choice, every mistake, every drop of blood spilled—would carry the weight of them.