Chapter 55

Maren

The walls of my parents’ kitchen had always felt smaller than the pack house—warmer, safer, filled with the scent of my mom’s cooking and my dad’s steady presence. Tonight, they felt like a cage. Every tick of the old clock on the wall was another nail hammered into me, and I couldn’t breathe.

I’d had enough of whispers. Enough of half-truths. Enough of being treated like some fragile glass