Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Three
Amaris

Day twenty-eight breaks me in a way I didn’t expect, because it doesn’t come with a fight.
It comes with quiet.
The missing patrol never becomes a bloody spectacle for me to react to. Boone and Asher go out. Ember goes with them, far too cheerful about it. Kenton stays tense, snapping at small things like the lodge itself offended him. Maxon goes colder, more controlled, like he’s stacking weapons in his mind and counting exits.
Then night falls, and nobody has answers, and the pack keeps moving like routine can hold the world together by force.
Routine doesn’t hold anything. Routine just gives you a place to stand while you wait to get hit.
I try to train it out of my system because training works on everything else. I hit the yard until my hands ache. I run the perimeter paths until my lungs burn. I force my body to do something so my mind can’t.
My mind finds a way anyway.
It happens late, when most of the lodge is quiet, and the hallways smell like cooling fire and wolves settling into sleep. I’m in the small back corridor near the storage room where Boone keeps extra gear, and my bag sits on the floor at my feet like an anchor I can’t set down.
The envelope inside it feels heavier tonight.
I tell myself I’m not going to read it again.
Then I crouch, pull it out, and slide my thumb under the flap like my body never asked my brain for permission.
Axel’s handwriting greets me like a punch.
Careful letters. Steady lines. The kind of neatness that always looked like control from the outside, like he had his life together, like he wasn’t fighting to breathe every day.
I read the first line, and my throat closes. Not because the words are new, because they aren’t. They’re burned into me by now.
It’s because the lodge is quiet enough that there’s space for them to land.
The sentence I always get stuck on is halfway down the page, where he says he’s tired of being afraid to live.
I stare at it until my vision blurs.
You didn’t have to do it alone.
The thought rises sharp and useless, because he did. He did it alone, and I didn’t stop him, and I didn’t even know I needed to try until it was too late.
My fingers crumple the edge of the paper, and the room feels too small, too warm, too full of wolf scent and smoke and life continuing like it has the right.
I shove the letter back into the envelope and press it hard against my chest, like pressure can undo time. It doesn’t.
My breathing turns uneven, and my throat burns. I try to swallow it down the way I always swallow things down, because breaking feels like losing.
Then the grief finally finds the crack, and it hits like my ribs split open.
I slide down against the wall and sit on the floor with my knees drawn up, the letter clutched in my hands like a weapon and a wound. My vision swims, and my chest shakes, but no sound comes out at first. I’m too angry for sound, but a broken breath escapes anyway, and it turns into another, and another, and suddenly I’m crying like my body’s been holding its own throat closed for weeks and it finally let go.
I hate it. I hate how helpless it feels. I hate how the tears make my face hot, and my hands shake. I hate how the ache in my chest feels like it’s going to kill me when I already know it won’t, because I’m still here, and that’s the worst part.
Axel isn’t.
Footsteps come down the hall, and I wipe at my face hard enough that my skin stings, furious at myself for being seen. I try to stand, but my legs don’t cooperate right away.
Maxon’s scent hits the corridor before he does. He steps into view, and the second he sees me on the floor, his posture changes, not dramatically, but immediately. The cold control cracks just enough to show something raw underneath.
He doesn’t speak right away. He just closes the distance slowly, like he’s approaching a wild animal that might bolt.
I lift my chin, defensive even while my eyes burn. “Don’t,” I rasp.
He stops a few feet away. “Don’t what?” he asks quietly.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I snap, even though it comes out shaky.
His gaze stays steady. “Like you’re hurting.”
“I’m fine,” I lie.
Maxon’s mouth tightens. “You are not fine.”
I press the envelope harder to my chest. “Go away.”
He doesn’t move. “I will if you want,” he says. “But I’m not leaving because you’re angry at yourself for having a pulse.”
My breath catches, sharp. “You don’t get to talk about him.”
“I’m not,” Maxon says, voice low. “I’m talking about you.”
I swallow hard, and the tears threaten again. I hate that he’s close enough to see everything.
Maxon takes a careful step closer. “Can I sit?” he asks.
The question hits me wrong, because no one asks permission when they want space near you. They take it, crowd it, and claim it like you owe them comfort, but Maxon waits, and I nod once, barely.
He sits on the floor a few feet from me, back against the opposite wall, leaving space between us like a line he refuses to cross unless I invite him. His hands rest on his knees, relaxed but ready, like restraint is second nature.
The quiet stretches and my breathing steadies by force, then breaks again.
Maxon’s voice comes softly. “Is it him?”
I stare at the envelope, then at the wall, then anywhere but Maxon’s eyes. “My brother,” I say, and the words rip out of my throat like they were stuck there. “My twin.”
Maxon’s jaw tightens. He doesn’t ask for details, and he doesn’t push. He just nods once like he understands the weight without needing to weigh it himself.
I wipe my face again. “He’s gone,” I say, voice cracking. “And I’m still here, and everyone keeps moving, and the wolves keep talking, and I keep training like I can punch grief in the mouth.”
Maxon’s gaze stays on me. “You can’t punch it,” he says.
“I know,” I spit, and the anger flares because knowing doesn’t fix anything. “I hate that I can’t.”
Maxon shifts slightly, not closer, just enough that I feel his attention sharpen. “You don't have to carry it alone.”
The sentence hits like a weak point. My throat tightens. “I did,” I whisper. “I already did. I carried everything alone, and he still died.”
Maxon’s voice turns even quieter. “You did not kill him.”
My laugh comes out broken. “You don’t know that.”
Maxon holds my gaze for the first time, and the steadiness in his eyes is almost violent. “I know you,” he says. “I know what kind of person you are. You don't destroy the people you love.”
The words land in my chest, and it hurts because I want to believe them.
I squeeze the envelope until the paper creases. “He wrote this,” I say, and my voice shakes. “He wrote goodbye like it was an apology.”
Maxon’s expression tightens with something like rage that has nowhere to go. “Give it to me,” he says softly.
I recoil, instinctively. “No.”
Maxon doesn’t push. “Not to take,” he clarifies. “To hold while you breathe. You can take it back whenever you want.”
I stare at him, suspicious, angry, and exhausted. Then my hands start shaking again, and the fight drains out of me for one second, just long enough to let me reach across the space and put the envelope in his palm.
Maxon takes it like it’s fragile. He doesn’t open it and read it; he just holds it with steady hands like he’s carrying something sacred.
The sight makes my eyes burn again.
“Come here,” he says quietly.
I flinch at the words, old reflex, but his posture stays open. He doesn’t reach for me, and he doesn’t assume. He just waits.
I hate that my body wants warmth, that my chest aches so badly it feels like it’s begging.
I move anyway, crawling the short distance to sit beside him, close enough that our shoulders almost touch.
Maxon shifts, slowly, giving me space to pull away. “Can I?” he asks.
I nod once because I can’t make my mouth form the word.
Maxon slides an arm around my shoulders and pulls me in with steady pressure, not trapping, just holding. His other hand stays on the envelope, resting it against my thigh like it belongs with me.
I let my forehead drop against his chest, and the sound that leaves me is ugly, and I don’t care. Maxon doesn’t shush me. He doesn’t tell me it’s going to be okay, and he doesn’t offer stupid comfort that feels like lies.
He just holds me, breathing steady, letting me fall apart without making it into a weakness. My tears soak his shirt, and my chest shakes until it hurts.
When it finally eases, when the grief stops being a wave and turns back into a constant ache, I lift my head and meet his eyes.
Maxon’s gaze stays steady. “You still here?” he says.
I swallow. “Yeah.”
His mouth tightens. “Then you don't apologize for that.”
The envelope is still in his hand, and I take it back slowly, pressing it to my chest again, and this time it doesn’t feel like a rock. It feels like proof that Axel existed, and that I still do too.
Maxon’s fingers brush my jaw lightly, in the form of a question, and I lean into the touch, then I kiss him.
Not desperately or hungrily, but deliberately.
It's a choice that says that I’m still here, and that I’m still allowed to want warmth.
Maxon kisses me back, carefully, then deeper when I let him.
When I pull away, my voice comes rough. “Don’t leave tonight.”
Maxon’s eyes darken. “I won’t,” he says.
And for the first time since the letter, I believe a promise without feeling stupid for it.