Chapter 128 More Thoughts
ADRIANA
Leaving was harder than I thought it would be and easier than I’d feared, which is the strange thing about decisions you’ve already made somewhere beneath your own awareness. By the time you act on them, half the work is already done.
I packed quickly, without letting myself slow down, because slowing down would have meant thinking and thinking would have meant going down the hallway and knocking on Elijah’s door and saying things I wasn’t ready to say yet. So I moved efficiently and I didn’t give myself time to reconsider.
I paused outside Leo’s door. I stood there for a long moment with my bag over my shoulder, listening to the quiet on the other side. He was probably sleeping. I wasn’t going to knock. I didn’t want to explain to him what I was doing or why, I didn't want to see his face when he understood that I was leaving. Instead I pulled a folded piece of paper from my pocket, the letter I had written the night before when I couldn’t sleep, and slid it under the door.
I hoped he wouldn’t hate me when he read it. I hoped he would understand, when he was older if not now, that leaving wasn’t the same as abandoning. That sometimes people had to go somewhere difficult so that they could come back better.
Yara guided me. Without her I would have been lost because I had never made this journey on foot and the forest didn’t organize itself conveniently for travelers who were operating on stubbornness and suppressed emotion.
She kept me moving in the right direction and I kept walking, and by the end of the first day my legs ached in a way that was almost welcome because it gave me something concrete to focus on.
“He was trying to protect you,” Yara said on the second morning. “You understand that, don’t you? He wasn’t keeping things from you because he thought you were weak. He kept things from you because he didn’t want to add more weight to something that was already very heavy.”
“I’m not answering that right now.”
“You don’t have to answer it. I’m just saying it.”
I kept walking. The trees were thinner here than they’d been yesterday, the light coming through at a different angle, and I could tell we were getting closer even before Yara confirmed it.
“We should reach the border by nightfall.”
“Good.” I shifted my bag to the other shoulder. “You said there was something I needed to know before we got there.”
“The people in your pack did not love you before you left. They will not have developed warmer feelings in your absence. To them you were the unwanted daughter, the one who didn’t matter. Walking back in and announcing that you intend to lead will not be received with enthusiasm.”
“I know that.”
“You’re going to have to make them afraid of you before they will respect you. Not afraid in the way your father did it. He ruled through cruelty and that’s part of why everything fell apart. But afraid in the sense that they understand you are serious and you are capable and you will not be moved. There will be people who challenge you immediately, on the first day, because they will want to establish that they don’t accept your authority. You cannot let that pass.”
I thought about my father. About the way the room changed when he walked into it, the silence that followed his commands.
He had achieved that through violence and manipulation. I didn’t want that.
But I understood what Yara was describing. There was a difference between cruelty and clarity. Between making people fear you and making people understand that you meant exactly what you said. I could do the latter. I had survived enough to know I was capable of more than people expected from me.
“I’m not afraid of what’s coming,” I said.
“I know you’re not. I’m proud of you for that.”
We walked on. The forest thinned further and I could begin to smell the change in the air that meant territorial boundaries.
I had been thinking, as the hours passed, about Lisa. About the fact that she was out there somewhere and that her father was dead and that the pack we had both grown up in was currently without a proper Alpha. She would know all of that. She would be calculating too.
If I didn’t get there first and establish something solid, she would find her way back and fill the vacuum with whatever served her best. And then any fight I had with her wouldn’t happen on neutral ground. It would happen on ground she already controlled.
That thought moved my feet faster.
Then something happened that stopped me completely.
There were voices in my head. Not Yara’s voice — something different. Multiple threads, indistinct, like overhearing a conversation through a wall.
“Yara—”
“They’re not voices. Not the way you mean.”
“Then what are they?”
“You’re reading thoughts, Adriana. Your abilities are beginning to surface. What you’re hearing is not inside your own head — it’s coming from outside. From people nearby.”
I stood very still in the middle of the path and tried to focus on what I was picking up. Fragments. A feeling of anxiety. Something about being in trouble. About losing someone and having to explain it.
“Who is that? Who am I hearing?”
“The guards Elijah sent to follow you. They lost sight of you an hour ago and they’re terrified of what he’ll say when they report back.”
I turned around slowly. Nothing visible. But they were there.
I felt two things simultaneously. A flash of irritation at Elijah for sending people after me without telling me, and then, immediately after it, something that was reluctantly close to gratitude. Because Yara was already speaking.
“You’re going to need them when you arrive. I can’t protect you the way you’d need me to. Not yet, I’m still not ready to be fully visible. But they can stand with you when the pack challenges you. Let me bring them to you.”
“And then what?”
“And then you walk into your home pack with backup and you take what belongs to you. No more running, Adriana. Not from this.”
The border was visible through the trees ahead, marked by the particular quality of the dark that meant we were almost there. The moon was coming up.
I breathed in. Breathed out. And I kept walking.