“You’re up.”
Ali had never been one for stating the obvious. Or using short sentences. Or staring just over my shoulder instead of looking me in the eye.
“I’m up,” I confirmed.
The dark circles under her eyes were uneven and oddly shaped, like inkblots on a note card, and though I was pretty sure that I looked worse, the wage this whole ordeal had obviously taken out of Ali hit me hard.
“How long have I been out?” I asked, determined not to let her see how painful speaking was.
“Three days. Doc couldn’t explain it. Nobody could.”
Three days? I’d been unconscious for three days with a battered face and handful of cracked ribs? That wasn’t normal, was it? Given that I’d never been beaten before, I wasn’t sure. The only thing I did know was that I hadn’t blacked out from the pain Sora had rained down on my body, fist after fist, kick after kick. I hadn’t lost consciousness bit by bit, piece by piece. It hadn’t closed in on me. I hadn’t taken a particularly hard blow to the head.
I’d blacked out because I’d refused to fight back.
The conclusion made no sense and complete sense at the exact same time, and my face was throbbing too much to question it. Memory of the haze—the need to protect myself, the solar eclipse in my brain when I’d refused—grounded me in place and rendered me speechless for a moment.
“Where am I?” I recovered, not wanting to think about it. About how inhuman I felt when I gave in to the whisper in the back of my brain to fight, fight, fight, survive.
Ali’s brow furrowed at my question. “You’re in your room.”
For a second, I thought that maybe I’d suffered permanent brain damage, because the answer seemed so obvious, but then my mind processed the fact that I’d had very good reason not to recognize my own room.
It was bare. Absolutely bare. My desk was empty. My closet doors were open, and there were no clothes inside. My books were in boxes beside the shelves, and even the bedding that I was sleeping on wasn’t mine.
“Where’s all of my stuff?” I asked.
“Packed,” Ali said.
“Packed?” I repeated.
She didn’t say a single word.
“Why is all of my stuff packed?” Was she kicking me out? Was Callum taking me from her? Were they sending me away?
Bryn had been a bad girl, and now they didn’t want her anymore.
I stopped breathing, the tightening in my chest drowning out the ache in my ribs.
“Your stuff is packed because we’re leaving,” Ali said, matter-of-fact.
“Leaving? For where? Who?”
“Yes. Montana. You. Me. The twins.”
What was she talking about? Montana? That was the very rim of Callum’s territory. Only peripherals lived there.
“We’re leaving?”
“Well, after what they did you to, we’re certainly not staying here.”
I remembered the set of Ali’s jaw and the ferocity in her voice when she’d said that I was hers first—her daughter, her responsibility, her charge.
When it comes to her safety, my word is law.
“Casey?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer, but I asked anyway.
Ali’s expression—already hard—went completely blank. “Casey,” she said in a tone that seemed to communicate that she couldn’t be bothered with elaborating further, “is gone.”
“Gone as in dead?”
Ali shrugged. “Might as well be.”
“You’re leaving Casey,” I said, my voice going up an octave. “You’re leaving Casey and taking me and the twins and we’re moving to Montana?”
Ali nodded. “That about covers it.”
“But, Ali—”
“This isn’t up for discussion. It’s decided. The station wagon’s been mostly packed for two days. We’ve just been waiting on you to wake up. Now, can you get out of bed?”
No, I could not get out of bed. I couldn’t even process what was happening. I’d known that Ali wouldn’t take the whole Pack Justice thing well, but this …
“Bryn. Can you get out of bed? Can you walk?”
I swung my feet over the side of my bed and stood up. All things considered, it was easy. Even my ribs didn’t protest too much.
“Doc said you did a lot of healing while you were unconscious,” Ali told me. “You’re still banged up, but your pupils aren’t dilated, and he said that unless there were signs of a head injury, you should be fine to travel.”
Travel.
As in leave.
Leave our home.
Leave our family.
Leave the pack.
“Ali, we can’t go.”
She turned around and walked toward the door. At first, I thought she was going to walk out without answering me at all, but instead, she spoke in a tight, strangled voice that made me wonder if she’d turned around because she didn’t trust herself to maintain steely control over the muscles in her face.