Page 166 of Pack Frenzy
It doesn't come.
Then something hot and dizzy cracks through my chest, not relief, not really. Something uglier.
Rage that I didn't get to watch. Grief that makes no sense, grief for the trial that's over now, for the answers I'll never get to demand.
And underneath it all, this terrible, shameful, gut-deepgladnessthat he suffered. That someone made him afraid. I don't know what kind of person that makes me, but I’m not sure I care.
Dad reads the article at the kitchen table, folds the paper slowly, deliberately, and sets it aside.
When he passes Eli on the porch, something in his eyes flickers that’s dark, certain, final. The kind of look that doesn't belong in daylight.
Cassian meets it without flinching. Something passes between them that I'm not supposed to see. Some debts settle themselves. Some debts don't need witnesses.
I don't ask. I don't have to. And maybe that should horrify me…the possibility curling at the edges of my mind, the questions I'm choosing not to voice.
But all I feel is my father's hand squeezing my shoulder as he walks past, warm and steady.
Good, I think, and the word doesn't taste like shame. It tastes like family.
Aweek later, we’re piled into a yacht, some guy my dad knows who owes him a favor. I know better than to ask why or what.
We anchor about twenty miles offshore, at the coordinates Detective Garcia marked, where the missing cruise footage said Sabrina’s body might have gone under.
The water’s too calm, too blue. It doesn’t look like a place that could take someone away and never give them back.
I grip the railing until my knuckles go white, until the metal bites grooves into my palms. The salt air burns my eyes—or maybe that's just the tears I'm refusing to let fall. Not yet. If I start now, I won't stop.
My stomach cramps. My throat feels like I swallowed glass, and it’s still scraping on the way down. Everything in me wants to scream her name across the water, as if she might answer.
Mom joins me at the railing, the wind tugging at her hair. She looks lighter somehow, even with red eyes and tear tracks on her cheeks. Dad stands beside her in a crisp linen shirt, sleeves rolled up, trying to pretend this is just another family outing.
Rowan, Cassian, and Eli hover near me along the rail, waiting and ready if I need them.
Sabrina’s bracelet sits cold in my hand. The crescent charm glints in the sunlight, silver worn soft from years of her wearing it.
Dad moves first. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out something small—smooth, carved wood, the color of old whiskey. A compass.
He clears his throat. “So she never gets lost again.”
He tosses it over the railing. It breaks the surface with barely a sound and drifts down into the waves.
Mom kneels next, holding something round and green—a wreath she wove herself from seaweed, pressed flowers, and biodegradable ribbons. It’s delicate, beautiful in the simplest way. “For peace,” she whispers, and releases it. It floats, rocking gently with the tide.
The crescent charm presses cold into my palm—her charm, her favorite, the one she never took off.
"Hey, Bree." My voice comes out wrong—scraped raw, barely a whisper. I try again. "Hey."
God, this is stupid. She can't hear me. She's gone. She's been gone for years, and no amount of talking to the ocean is going to bring her back. But I keep going anyway, because what else do I have?
"I know you always loved the ocean more than anything. More than land, more than people, more than—" My voice cracks clean in half. I have to stop.
Breathe. Start again. "More than me, probably, you jerk."
A laugh slips out that’s thin, crooked, more sob than sound, and then the tears come. Hot and fast and completely beyond my control. I swipe at them uselessly, but they just keep coming, blurring the horizon into watercolor smears.
“I hope wherever you are…it’s like this. Warm, endless, beautiful, and safe. No more running. No more being afraid.”
The wind brushes my face, gentle as fingers through hair, and I pretend it’s her. Just for a second.
