I kept the letter under my floorboard for six weeks, and I knew all three hundred and four words by heart.
The logging job up north. A room over a store. My name written down like I had a right to it.
One shift left before I could send it. Brin was waiting by the door with the scrap bucket, hiding his bad leg.
Brin: You look like you're about to throw up. Did she say something?
Liora: No. She's been sweet all week. That's worse.
Brin: Sweet is worse. Sweet means she's digging.
Liora: Did you find out about the truck?
Brin: Fourteenth. It stops on the quarry road at dark. If you're on it, I don't know anything.
He said it fast, the way people say things they're scared of.
Brin: Just go, Liora. Don't be here when she figures it out.
Ansel came up the row with the shift list, and the whole smokehouse straightened.
He walked past me, then stopped.
Ansel: North racks are short a hand. Stay on them tonight.
That was all. His scent was woodsmoke and cold air, and the bond pulled low in my belly until my hands shook on the hook.
Liora: Yes, Alpha.
For one second he looked like he might say something real.
Then his eyes found Sabine across the floor, and they went flat.
Ansel: Get it done.
Sabine smiled at me from the hook station. That smile said she had counted every second of it.
She did not come at me. She did not say one word.
That was the worst part.
That night I sat on my floor with the letter in my lap and read it one more time.
Then I heard her boots in the hallway. She never knocked.
Sabine: What's that, sister?
I got it under the mattress. Not fast enough.
Her hand was on it before mine was.
Sabine: Fuck me. You wrote them a letter.
Sabine: A polite fucking letter.
She read it out loud in a baby voice, and by the third line I could not hear the words anymore.
Sabine: You're leaving this pack. Going north to work and live in a room over a store.
Sabine: You think I'd let you.
Liora: It's a job. Anyone can take a job.
Sabine: Don't play stupid with me. It's not the job. It's him.
She leaned in and breathed at my throat, and her face changed.
Sabine: You smell like him. You always smell like him.
Sabine: What did I say I'd cut off?
She held the letter over the lamp and let the corner catch.
The paper curled and went orange, and my whole future went up with it.
Sabine: There. Now you're not going anywhere.
I watched the last of it turn black in the grate.
Two hundred days of counting, and it was ash on my own floor.
She took my scarred hand and turned it over, gentle as a sister, then pressed her thumb into the old burn.
Sabine: You are not leaving this pack. Say it.
Liora: I'm not leaving.
Sabine: Say it like you mean it, or I'll start with Brin's other leg.
My mouth was dry. I said it plain, like I said sorry in the smokehouse.
Liora: I am not leaving this pack.
Sabine: Good girl. Now we're going to find out what else you've been hiding.
She shut the door soft, like family do.