He walked away, and I let him.
Not because I wanted to.
Not because it didn't tear something raw and brutal in me.
But because I couldn't find my voice couldn't piece together the words that would've stopped him.
The letter lay on the ground between us, but it may as well have been a dagger still dripping with betrayal. My fingers itched to pick it up, to tear it apart, to scream that it wasn't what he thought that it was strategy, survival, power. But none of those things could erase what he'd seen on the page: my name, his name, and Ryker's in the same breath of treachery.
The forest swallowed his figure until I was alone again, surrounded only by cold air and the faint rustle of branches whispering secrets to each other.
I stood still for what felt like hours.
