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No.Â
NoâŚ
Noâ
I failed.Â
 After all the training, the emotional tangle that I had to work through, the hurt, the promise to myselfâto mom.Â
I had faltered and let myself be caught.Â
If it had been Vernoique, I would have been dead, my gaping hole where my jugular should have been.Â
The realization hollowed me out faster than fear ever could.
This wasn't just a mistake.
This was failure with a face.
My mother had bled out on cold asphalt while I learned how to survive. While I learned how to run. While I learned how to be strong enough to kill the man who had broken her life and left me as evidence of his cruelty.
And here I was.
Pinned to the forest floor by another Alpha, lungs still burning from a chase I had lost, my body trembling not from pain but from the sickening understanding that if I could not evade thisâif I could not survive a controlled hunt meant to sharpen meâthen I had no right to think myself capable of vengeance.
