“Sophie’s alive.”
I stop.
The rushing of my blood pounds in my ears, drowning out every sound in the forest.
“You’re lying.” My voice comes out raw. “That’s all you do, Stuart. You say whatever you have to to get your way.” I take another retreating step, backing into a tree.
“I’m not.” He takes another step toward me. I can feel the heat of him now. “She didn’t die, Mo,” he says into my ear. “My father crushed her throat, but the pack healer got to her in time. By the time you were sold and transported, she was breathing on her own.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“See for yourself.”
He reaches for his pocket and pulls out a phone.
He unlocks it and turns the screen toward me. I don’t want to look. Because what if it is her? And what if it’s not?
I force myself to look.
Sophie. My mouth falls open in shock.
Older. Thinner. Her hair is shorter, and there’s a scar on her neck—thick and jagged, running from ear to collarbone. But it’s her… The shape of her face, the curve of her mouth, those eyes that always looked at the world as if it might still be kind. She’s standing in front of a building, wearing a blue sweater, squinting against the sun. Tired. But standing. Breathing.
Alive.
My knees buckle. I grab the tree trunk and hold on, bark biting into my palm. My hands won’t stop shaking. The whole world won’t stop shaking.
“Everyone knew she was alive?”
“Everyone except you.”
Everyone in my old pack knew my sister survived. They watched me get dragged to a cell. Watched me get sold. Watched me get loaded into a transport and shipped to a stranger. And nobody told me Sophie was alive. They let me believe I’d watched her die. Let me carry that for three years.
“If it makes you feel any better, my father commanded everyone not to say anything to you.”
“Where is she?” My voice doesn’t sound like mine.
Stuart pockets the phone. “She’s with the pack. She thinks you’re dead, Mo.”
She thinks I’m dead.
My sister is alive and has spent three years believing I’m gone. Three years of grief, while I’ve been in the woods talking to a stick and a rock.
“Why?” The word rips out of me. “Why would you tell her that?”
His expression doesn’t shift. “The head alpha thought it was better that way. For both of you.”
“Better?” My voice climbs. “How is letting someone believe their sister is deadbetter?”
“Sophie was fragile after her accident. He decided it would be kinder to let her think you died trying to escape than to know you’d been sold.”
I stare at him.
Stuart takes another step forward, and I back into a tree. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to bring you home. To bring you to her.”
“Bring me to her?” A laugh tears out of me, jagged and wrong. “You think I’m going anywhere with you?”
“She misses you. She cries for you.”