Wolf's Rogue by Cassie Alexander

Author:Cassie Alexander [Alexander, Cassie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Caskara Press

22

Stella

It didn’t befit a councilmember to run crying through the woods, and yet—Stella zig-zagged on a little-known trail, through the back ways, up and back and down, until she came to the burned-out tree that she and Remi used to hide in when they were mad at their instructors. She crouched inside it now, the space barely big enough for her, put her head on her knees, and sobbed.

Was that really what being pack leader was? Staring down the inevitable? Being prepared for infinite loss?

Letting people you loved go on missions—knowing some wouldn’t come back… in advance?

She was so angry at the fact, but also disgusted and sick to her stomach. She wanted to throw up. She tried to catch her breath but she couldn’t—everything felt wrong.

Her anger had had a target for so long—herself—but now to find out that she’d never really had a choice—and that neither had Remi—and that everything was preordained? It made her head pound trying to wrap her mind around it.

Because if that was true, then, what was the point in literally anything? Why not just give up and let bad things happen, all the time? Why try to fight it if you couldn’t stop them?

And… if it hadn’t been her time to die, what would’ve happened if she’d stayed with Remi—fighting off the Hunters?

At the very least she could’ve watched him die.

So he wouldn’t have had to die alone.

And maybe then she could’ve stopped them from desecrating his corpse.

Images she’d never be able to forget burned in her mind, and she screamed, punching the inside of the tree again and again, splintering off dead wood in chunks, until her hands were bleeding and snotty tears were running down her face.

When the air was full of the scent of earthy sap and her hands were raw she sat there shuddering. With grief, with loss, with hate, and then afterwards and underneath, the eerie absence of it all, like all of her feelings had been excavated and now there was nothing left inside her.

She fell back onto her heels, and her phone popped out of her pocket. She stared at it, like it was something from a different planet, and then slowly picked it up to turn it on.

Do you believe in hell? she texted back to Zach.

Because she did, now.

Ever since Remi had died it felt like she was living there.

She stared at her phone, waiting for something from it to save her, and when nothing did she knew it was all up to her. On her own. Again.

She curled up into a ball and lay down on the ground, still crying.

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